Windows 7 vs. Windows XP On a Netbook

Justin writes "Many in the industry are counting on Windows 7 to bring the netbook market to the next level. Having netbook manufacturers ship netbooks with 7+ year old Windows XP pre-installed surely deterred some from joining the ranks of households with the small, light and portable netbooks. It seems Microsoft has addressed most of the pitfalls of Windows Vista on a netbook by increasing battery life and performance to be very close to that of the lighter-weight Windows XP. Legit Reviews has the full scoop of battery life and performance tests pitting Windows 7 against Windows XP on the ASUS Eee PC 1005HA Netbook." I'd like to see a follow-up with a few different Netbook-friendly Linux distros, too.

Comments

Lighter weight XP???

[cjonslashdot]

Lighter weight Windows XP - now that is a contradiction in terms!!!

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[Anonymous Coward]

Lighter than Vista is... still not even close to my 20mb-RAM-on-boot Slackware install though.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[Anonymous Coward]

And my 30MB-RAM-on-boot Ubuntu!

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[scorp1us]

Well, what about a lighter weight windows 2000? I mean that's what XP is.. 2000+bloat. Until games "required XP" (in fact, only 3 DirectX DLLs, copied easily enough from an XP system) I was plenty happy with 2000. But now one must worry about security updates which don't happen anymore. I'm leaning towards Linux these days. Same basic stuff, without the bloat. Plus the MS agreements where you don't own rights to the software in your computer are becoming an issue. If I can't use software in the approved way, or someone programs a kill switch, then I don't really own a computer do I?

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[thatskinnyguy]

Use nlite and then read your post. There is a whole lot that can be stripped out of an XP install set. I've installed it on as little as a 500MB footprint with no loss to the user experience.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[morcego]

Isn't "Slackware" a slang, meaning "My time is worth no more than US$ 0.01/hour, which is why I can waste it so" ?

Slackware is great if you want to know HOW Linux works. Otherwise, it is just a waste of time.

(For reference: I don't use either Ubuntu or Slackware)

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[ground.zero.612]

-1 Troll seriously? No members of the Church with mod points to balance out the universe?

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[Draek]

From experience I can tell you that Windows 7 (64-bit version) can be installed on a 10 GB partition. Barely, but it does work.

If you want light, Minix still can't be beat but I don't see anyone using it as a desktop OS. I wonder why.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[ground.zero.612]

Isn't "Slackware" a slang, meaning "My time is worth no more than US$ 0.01/hour, which is why I can waste it so" ?

Slackware is great if you want to know HOW Linux works. Otherwise, it is just a waste of time.

(For reference: I don't use either Ubuntu or Slackware)

Slack is what we in the Church of the SubGenius are trying to accumulate in life.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[hairyfeet]

That is why I recommend DSL Linux on older laptops where the battery is starting to lose charge. On this 733MHz SFF I'm typing on it is using barely 40Mb of RAM and that is with the TORAM option flag set, which loads the whole thing to RAMdisk! Which means on even a machine as old as this 733MHz with 384Mb of RAM it flies and programs load as fast as I can click them.

To be fair though, there IS a version of WinXP floating around the Internet called "TinyXP Beast Edition" that gives you all the Vista pretty and still only consumes 63Mb of RAM running the desktop. MSFT has just never been good at tweaking their OSes for speed. Maybe they should hire the TinyXP dudes to make a "Tiny 7 Monster Edition"? And for those that scream "Piracy!" for me daring to mention TinyXP? You can actually use your own key with it like I did and it works just fine. It is just easier to download a pre-tweaked version that to spend all that time tweaking it yourself. Oh and it has SP3 already slipstreamed, whereas my retail disk is XP SP2.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[MrHanky]

I've tried a stripped-down pirate version (called XP JACKed Edition, IIRC) that would boot and run in a virtual machine limited to 20 MB RAM. It worked fairly well, I even used it to play games like Oblivion for a while (not in a VM, though). XP can be remarkably lightweight.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, yes. Slackware is great if you don't want to be ignorant. Otherwise, you are just a waste of time, and should be banned from computers. /tongue-in-cheek hyperbole

But seriously, it's not like you spend all day hacking on it just to keep it running or up-to-date; the first month or two might be a little rough if you're accustomed to some other distribution's administration tools, but once you get the hang of maintaining a UNIX system (which you left out, and is by far the more valuable part) and know how Linux works, it's no more time-wasting than any other.

It's only if you try to maintain your ignorance, or resent spending a few hundred hours up-front to learn a whole class of OSes, that you could consider it a waste of time, and you'll probably spend that much time (granted, distributed over a longer period) learning the ins and outs of your distro's tools and custom config files. And then try moving from Ubuntu to NetBSD -- I've never done it, but I'd be surprised if it works out well. I can say that my life as a habitual slacker proved more than adequate preparation when I decided to set up NetBSD on an old desktop I had around. Everything worked more or less as expected, with no real surprises.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[cjonslashdot]

Exactly. The huge bloat defies explanation. I wish someone would decompile the code and see exactly why it is so friggin huge!!! In terms of value per byte, it seems way out of whack with what we had a decade ago.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[cjonslashdot]

In 1993 I had a Compaq Concerto. It was my favorite computer of all time (even more than my Macs that I have now). It was a pen-based machine and also had a keyboard. (Contrary to popular opinion, handwriting recognition actually worked: the catch is that it required the user to adapt and learn how to write so that the system can read your writing. If you were willing to do that, it had a very high rate of recognition.) The machine came with 4Mb or RAM but I put 12Mb in it - and that was considered HUGE at that time. (The battery lasted for four hours, and I had two so I could go for eight hours.) I ran Photoshop with NO PROBLEM on the machine, and many apps at once, including Netscape, etc. - which as you might recall had Java and lots of things bundled into it. I used to program in C++, Java, and Pascal on the thing. I seem to recall that it had a 128Mb disk drive.

So what the heck is the 16Gb of Windows 7 for????? In terms of the value of my computing experience, they are about the same - except that the Concerto would not have been able to handle the large media files of today unless you increased the RAM and disk space - but the OS certainly would not have minded as long as the codecs were installed. And let's not say it is because Windows is now multi-tasking where as Win 3.1 wasn't, because the original Unix was multi-tasking, and it fit in 4k or something like that.

I recall that I once installed Photoshop 3 on a Windows ME machine at a time when the latest version of Photoshop was 7. (Photoshop 7 was designed to run on Macs and Windows 3.1.) It started and was ready to use in under one second!!! And it was lightning fast. Using the current Photoshop of that time required the usual 30 seconds to start up. Yet, Photoshop 3 did everything - it just did not have some of the bells and whistles of later versions that one normally does not use - things that should not be part of the runtime anyway. In any case, any new features were not worth a factor of 20+ in startup time and a similar factor in memory footprint!

So my conclusion is that the current bloatware is somehow designed to be bloated. Something is fishy! Is it the large OS libraries that must be linked in now? The .Net, layered on top of the Win API? (talking about Windows here - similar questions for other OSs.) I suspect that our software could be much leaner, and run on much smaller footprints, and start and run much, much faster, and therefore use much less power - and therefore run for much longer without recharging. Again, I wish someone would decompile the code of some of these programs (and OSs) and see what the extra bloat is actually doing and what the source of it is.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[mgblst]

Good point, if there was only some way we could balance things, rather than going to the extremes. Unfortunately, we all know the law, forcing us to adopt either the biggest or smallest OS footprint.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[w0mprat]

7/Vista can shed 2-3Gb just be not installing speech support, printer drivers, stupid apps. (speech support is 700mb on it's own). 7 32-bit can be pared down to a 1gb ISO and about 2gb installed excluding pagefile/hiberfil.sys.

Windows 7 already has many of the tweaks people were doing to Vista. If you look at the list of services it looks much like tweaked vista in terms of what is disabled/manual or set to delayed automatic start. IMHO there is not as much advantage triming the fat off Win7 as it is pretty responsive anyway. If you have a netbook with a 16gb SSD it's a different story. Interestingly you can bring Vista back up in performance to almost match 7 - which is where code optimzations in 7 really shine. (The much improved superfetch means you can install all kinds of crap and not have the same slow down as XP once did).

Realistically, Ubuntu 9.04 (and thus Mint 7 / Kubuntu et al) is the killer netbook OS right now. Especially with ext4 and SSD tweaks (noatime/tmpfs tweaks rock). Windows 7 / 9.04 dualboot is a killer productivity combo and should be the evny of any Mac diehard.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[scorp1us]

Its the colorful buttons on the title bar... they stored them as BMP.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[westcoast philly]

Yeah, umm. about that.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9 ... 16GB SDD and 2GB RAM. Onboard Intel video. Runs quite nicely, with aero enabled, all the bells and whistles.

So, sorry to bust your MS hate, but give it a rest.
Have you tried Win7? ...Have you tried Vista with SP1 loaded? what about XP.

As far as disk space. in Oct 2001, the average PC was loaded with a 30-40GB drive. with an average XP install running between 1.2 and 1.4GB that would be .... 3.5-4% of a system's harddrive. Today, the average PC is configured with (at least) a 500GB drive, and windows 7 installs in about 10-12GB which is..... 2-2.4% of the system's drive. Wow, it actually takes LESS relative hard drive space to install. Shall we calculate the MEMORY usage next?

Give up the whole 'M$ sucks!!1!' and 'I want my windows 3.1' bullshit, and adapt. It's called evolution. There's a reason we don't use spears and rocks anymore.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[Mozk]

Just use nLite, which is probably what TinyXP was made with (to begin with). Getting rid of everything you don't use and disabling unnecessary services can save a lot of disk space and reduce memory usage significantly. It works with Windows 2000 too.

There are even analogs of nLite for Windows 98 if you want to go even slimmer.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[orangeplanet64]

Oh, and you are required to have a 128MB video card... to run your so-called "OPERATING SYSTEM."

umm it'll works well on lesser video cards. just use the windows classic theme. it'll still usable, save the aero desktop effects.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[UltimApe]

I have it installed my eee-pc's 8gb ssd drive...

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[Arker]

Actually you have it reversed.

Slackware is a huge timesaver. Hence the name.

It's so refreshing to deal with an OS that does what it's told, instead of trying to be clever.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[dna_(c)(tm)(r)]

[...]and see what the extra bloat is actually doing and what the source of it is.

Entropy. There is something similar going on with software: it requires substantial effort to keep things simple, it requires zero effort to let things get out of hand.

For the business side of things there seems to be no incentive to invest in code quality (reuse, reusability, refactoring, unit testing,...) for them different things represent value: new visible features (for marketing, customers upgrading,...), ...

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[hairyfeet]

There is a LOT more done with TinyXP than what you can do with nLite, trust me, I've used both. With TinyXP not only does it come with a Windows Installer sub menu on first run that gives you the choice of several useful programs like irfanview, but you right click on My Computer it gives you a submenu that gives you instant access to add/remove programs, services, right clicking on any folder gives "open in command prompt", frankly TinyXP is what XP should be for Power Users.

And as I said, why do all that damned work, when someone has done it for you? Just use your legit key and voila! A nicely tweaked WinXP all ready to go. And BTW on this 733MHz that came with WinXP from the office that gave it to me? TinyXP installed and was at the desktop in under 8 minutes. I have never seen an nLited XP get even close to that kind of speed. Try it sometime, you will find somebody went and put a lot of love and care into that build.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[CrashNBrn]

Except everything you list, is doable with Nlite. THe Menu options for MyComputer are in Nlites "Tweaks" section. And irfanView et al, is just a matter of including SilentInstaller apps, i.e one of Nlites subforums: Application Add-Ons

This can also be done with HFSLIP, though not guified, and would require you to include the .REG files for the rightClick options. Or create a Win2K install without any trace of Internet Explorer with HFSLIP +FDV's Filesets.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[morcego]

Ok, I will take the bait.

Pray tell me how is Slackware a time saver when compared to, lets say, RedHat Enterprise 5.

Please consider you need to manage 40+ servers running it.

On a second exercise, compare it to Ubuntu running on 40+ workstations (regular, non-geek users, like accounting, PCP, HR etc).

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[rtb61]

Yeah, that is absolutely right 'er' wrong. Ever heard of bridging the digital divide, of giving everyone access to computing and the net. At least you are correct in one aspect it is about time everyone upgraded, to FOSS. Save money on hardware and really, really save money on software.Fit for puerpose, check out the windows EULA, it ain't fit, it is flab.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[Anonymous Coward]

10GB?

I have one of the older Acer Aspire One netbooks, with nothing but an 8GB SSD for storage. I ran the Win7 beta on it, and (with the hibernation file disabled) I was left with 1.5GB free.

GP poster with his 16GB figure is pulling numbers out of his arse.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[Anonymous Coward]

I consider multi-undo to be more than "bells and whistles". AFAIK that came with 4.0.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[westcoast philly]

uh, yeah. If I want to use ubuntu, or BSD or Whatever... I can. That's what great about having a choice. MY choice is to use Windows, like the other 90% of the world. In fact, I quite like the new build.

I can afford a copy of Windows 7, and have already ordered it. If I couldn't, there's always the less-than-legal ways of getting it. How's THAT for giving access to everyone? In a country where 2/3 of the population has a computer at home, I'm not sure that going FOSS would make that much difference in access. Anyone here who doesn't have a computer, probably doesn't want one, or at least has access to one if they need it. My PHONE isn't FOSS, and IT can check my email and smurf the internets..

You holier-than-thou 'EVERYONE needs to use open source' nutcases are the reason I don't. That and the few ubuntu boxes I've put together are collecting dust because they just don't work right, after weeks of tweaking and patching... All I wanted was to play starcraft, and a modern machine couldn't even do that at higher than .5-1 fps. What does THAT tell you?

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[Yunzil]

Now, given the relative cost per gigabyte of disk space when XP was released vs today, how much does each cost in terms of dollars and cents?

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[hairyfeet]

Yes it is possible to jump through a bunch of BS and spend a couple of hours getting it done in nLite, or I can take 15 minutes with BT and be ready to burn an .ISO. Sure you CAN go that route, but my point is....why would you want to?

Somebody else has done all the work for you, not only is the BS gone from XP, but it comes with a nice black desktop (your choice on whether it has desktop widgets) all the major tweaks and patches already applied, just stick in the disk and go. It is like the old days of Win9x. Sure I could spend a couple of hours in DOS CLI and strip it down so it was a fast little bugger, or I could use this nice 98Lite the boss bought for me and do the same thing in the GUI in 1/5th the time. I have run TinyXP on several older boxes and there aren't any bugs, or trojans, or anything else. Just a nicely tweaked XP Pro that somebody put a lot of heart and soul into so I wouldn't have to. Thanks TinyXP dude, wherever you are!

Because with all the bling bling on, 7 tabs in FF3, and evil media player jamming my tunes in the background I am using less than 100Mb on this 733MHz which is maxed out at 384Mb of PC100. So thanks to the TinyXP dude even something as old as this rocks with XP. So between TinyXP and DSL Linux I can easily keep right on using this SFF 733MHz and have it fast, stable, and actually fun to use! Certainly better IMHO than it ending up ewaste in some landfill somewhere. But if you have the hours to blow going nLite, go right ahead. I have used it in the past and to get to where the TinyXP guy is would be a royal PITA. Me, I'd rather just spend 15 minutes with BT and be done with it.

Re:Lighter weight XP???

[Anonymous Coward]

You could still be happy with Win2k.

I mean... you will use Linux... so that's proof you don't game anymore.

So what?

[LeinadSpoon]

I thought the point of netbooks was to have a computer for accessing the internet and that's about it. Last I checked, XP could access the internet. I don't see the point in putting Windows 7 on your netbook at all.

Re:So what?

[Wowsers]

The point of installing Windows 7 is to keep Linux OFF a netbook!

Re:So what?

[pushing-robot]

DirectX 10, silly!

Seriously, though, Vista changed quite a few things under the hood. The only reason you don't see more Vista-only software yet is because it was, well, a flop.

If Windows 7 catches on, it won't be long before you run across software that refuses to run on XP.

Re:So what?

[synthparadox]

Well XP isn't going to be sold forever, and as it is now you need to pay a premium to get the Vista Business edition with the XP downgrade, so this article is actually quite good in promoting the confidence of consumers to buy Windows 7 for their netbook instead of looking for some hacked method to get XP on their shiny new netbook in the upcoming year.

TL;DR: When XP is no longer available to buy, I won't worry about putting Windows 7 on the netbook.

Re:So what?

[wjousts]

Security for starters. Vista changed a lot under the hood to improve security. So if your netbook is only for accessing the internet, there is actually more, not less, reason for dumping XP.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in my case. I run Firefox/IE on mine, but also use Outlook, Word, Excel, and various other apps including a custom car tuning application. I use my netbook (AspireOne) more than any other laptop I've ever owned. I've also got Windows 7 RC on it, and it runs great with 1.5MB of RAM. At least for me, I use a Netbook for far more than accessing the Internet.

Re:So what?

[Smegly]

Many in the industry are counting on Windows 7 to bring the netbook market to the next level.

[Citation needed] Who in "the industry" think this, exactly? Perhaps they mean bury it one level down, rather than take it to the "next level". Windows XP runs significantly slower on Netbooks, Vista 7 hasn't got a hope in hell of outperforming XP on a netbook. Smells like MS AstroTurfing to me....

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

1.5MB of RAM? Wow. Thats really light-weight, even for Windows 7!

Re:So what?

[LeinadSpoon]

I've ran XP for years and never had a security issue. Standard practices such as not opening attachments from people you don't know and keeping everything updated do wonderfully. Yes, not everyone follows them, but maybe after a few security problems, they'll learn.

Re:So what?

[basementman]

The point of netbooks is to use them for whatever the fuck you want. Just because they are called "netbooks" doesn't mean I'm only allowed to access the internet with them.

On my netbook I can browse the internet, write an essay in OpenOffice, watch 720p movies, run an FTP client, play CS:S. Upgrading to Windows 7 makes all of these things faster.

Re:So what?

[Colonel Korn]

I thought the point of netbooks was to have a computer for accessing the internet and that's about it. Last I checked, XP could access the internet. I don't see the point in putting Windows 7 on your netbook at all.

7's ~0.5 second sleep and awake times are a nice boost over XP, and on my Mini with 2 gigs of ram Firefox opens under 7 in 1/2 the time it took to open in XP. Also, when I boot up I can start opening programs as soon as the desktop loads, where in XP the whole system would freeze for seconds at a time during the 60 seconds after a boot, possibly because of the JMicron controller in my SSD. I'm not sure how I generally feel about the new taskbar in 7 at its default settings (i.e., OSX Docklike), but on the tiny screen of a netbook the reduced taskbar clutter is great. Windows management features like mouseover-full size Window previews make me feel a lot less claustrophobic in the tiny netbook world, as well.

Re:So what?

[LeinadSpoon]

Well, perhaps this is just personal preference, but while you can use pretty much any computer for anything, you might have more success with other computers. Just as you could browse the web by downloading pages with telnet, you could do whatever you want on your netbook, but if you're doing anything where performance becomes an issue, it makes more sense to me to just get a better computer and run XP or Linux on it.

Re:So what?

[gparent]

Windows 7 is better and faster. It'd be kinda like using Ubuntu 9.04 instead of 6.06.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

/facepalm -- Keeping Linux off the Netbook IS about making MS money.. are you new here?

Re:So what?

[maxume]

The vast majority of the security improving changes in Vista are user facing (mostly the default configuration and UAC), not under the hood.

Re:So what?

[clang_jangle]

My experience supporting XP users is that even if I train them not to click blindly on just anything they still get personal email from their luser friends and family who are malware-infected, so it's just a losing proposition. Much as I'd love to see everyone adopt Linux, realistically I am sort of looking forward to win7 being society's default OS. So far, my testing appears to indicate it will be a lot easier to supporrt than XP has been.

Re:So what?

[__aaclcg7560]

The command line is a beautiful thing. :P

Re:So what?

[PPH]

If your whole point in installing Windows 7 is to not run something else, then just think of the money you could save by just not buying a netbook. Or a PC. Or a broadband or dialup Internet connection.

I choose my O/S based upon what it does run.

Re:So what?

[Enderandrew]

Faster than XP? I've seen benchmarks, but a clean install of Windows 7 was slower than my old install of XP x64. 7 may be faster than Vista, but not XP.

It should be noted though that the Windows 7 MS is hyping for netbooks has MANY services disabled, where as they are comparing it to an XP that hasn't be similarly optimized.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I meant 1.5GB of RAM :-) Been a long morning already!

Re:So what?

[Thaelon]

Or, you could just not run as an administrator and get most of the same security.

Re:So what?

[Dahlgil]

That goes for notebooks as well, for which I thought the only point of them was to write notes...

Re:So what?

[lukas84]

Actually, no.

ASLR, Internet Explorer's Protected stuff (which not one of the competitors has), Bitlocker, the new Firewall (which finally has a nice group policy settings), service hardening using restricted accounts, NAP inclusion, kernel patch protection, etc. etc.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since XP can access the Internet, I don't see the point in putting Linux on your netbook either.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous coward would like to point out that you've missed the point entirely

Re:So what?

[Enderandrew]

Um, I just went through the article and XP was faster in basically every bench mark.

What feature does 7 provide you that is a huge benefit over XP, especially on a netbook?

Re:So what?

[sensei moreh]

Actually, the reason I have a netbook is as a laptop replacement. It's half the size, half the weight, and cost half the price of my previous laptop but has twice the HDD space, twice the RAM, and twice the number of threads per CPU (but the same clock speed). Netbooks may have been overtly marketed an email/word-processing/internet appliances, but they're clearly being used for additional tasks; tasks that netbook owners and potential buyers seem to think warrant a newer operating system.

Re:So what?

[TheNetAvenger]

I thought the point of netbooks was to have a computer for accessing the internet and that's about it. Last I checked, XP could access the internet. I don't see the point in putting Windows 7 on your netbook at all.

Well, let me play devil's advocate and throw out some ideas for you...

1) Security, there truly is a major level of security between XP and Win7. This goes from the built in malware tools, to even IE running in protected mode so it is technically more secure than running Firefox or Chrome, as the browser doesn't even user level rights. (This is why the Flash and recent IE exploits you have read about (that can even affect OS X and Linux are IMMUNE on Vista or Win7 when running IE.) - I know, this is hard to hear and I hate saying it myself, but is true.

2) Network features. Running through the airport and having the new Win7/Vista networking stack features is freaking awesome, as it not only does really good at just hooking into the WiFi, but also remembers. So that if go back through Denver it knows not only how to connect (which all OSes should do), but it also knows how to classify the network and flips on the Firewall on the fly and correctly sets all sharing settings based on the profile of the network there.

3) 3G features - Networking Again - 3G if you have the latest drivers from most manufacturers, and you have a 3G netbook, or even a 3G phone that you are tethering, the Network connection is treated more like a WiFi connection, and gives you instant information from the same interface, with Bars, Speed, etc, and again automatically just hooks you into the network and again applies the level of firewall security and sharing crackdown that you have specified.

4) Resume from Standby or Hibernate - Set your Power Button to hibernate and you can flip the netbook on and off as fast as you can open your phone. The speed differences in resume from standby are good, but the hibernate resume features are fast, and when you are trying to rebook flights running through an airport, you appreciate these little things.

5) Then add in 1000 other new features over XP, from better application boot times via Superfetch, to pulling up tons of information from a simple search. There are also the nice corporate features that work better and are handy from newer ways it deals with Offline files and access remote servers, to even NTFS features that do a bit extra to keep previous versions of your documents with you at all times, without even having to back them up every hour.

And this could go on and on and on, as the full list of several thousand features were contrasted between Win7 and XP that really do make things easier and work better than an 8 year old OS. (From bluetooth to even having the right printers appear based on what network I'm roaming on at the moment, just little things that are nice.)

----

Finally, netbooks are NOT ONLY for just browsing the internet. They are low power computers, and you seem to discount that there are users running Office, and Photoshop, and Corel, and Illustrator, and even playing games on these computers. There is a difference between getting a crap Web inteface to my documents when at the airport, and actually opening the application they were created in and just editing them.

You can also find 'geeks' like myself playing an MMO on netbooks, and sure it isn't 60fps, but 20-30fps on a device isn't bad, and ironically, most of the games that the Netbooks can actually run, hold their own and often run faster under Win7, as it does a better job of silencing background processes.

There are also the times, I just want to read an eBook, watch a movie, listen to a book, or listen to music, and then the Netbook becomes the ultimate PMP, and you will find me with headphones on and my Netbook is shoved in my briefcase. (Oh and on flights where space is tight, again, they work quire well for movie viewing, you are getting a 8-10" screen for you and anyone you travel with and about the same battery life as a gen

Re:So what?

[ground.zero.612]

If Windows 7 catches on, it won't be long before you run across software that refuses to run on XP.

Which is necessary to Microsoft's survival, being their own biggest competitor and all.

It could be necessary for progress in general. Although, maybe I'm mistaken and you'd prefer to retro fit your gasoline engine powered vehicle with a pair of oxen? I'm just sayin, at some point the past "version" becomes so obsolete you may no longer wish to support it. It may also be that the costs of maintaining support for said obsolescence is simply higher than abandoning it.

Re:So what?

[CannonballHead]

In other words, if they switched to Linux, they'd likely have the same problem? I'm guessing you can probably mess up your Linux box by running attachments, too.

I'm not guessing, I know that. ;) Or at least, mess up your user environment, if not the Linux box. But let's face it, if you're a single user with a single computer, you probably don't want rm -rf ~/* being run anymore than you'd want a virus installed on a Windows box...

That said, I do like Windows 7 so far. Pretty cool. So far, even Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.04 have played nicely with the network/samba/etc, which was a plus, since I'm using a Linux box as a NAS (in addition to using it in other ways... media player in the other room, etc)

Re:So what?

[fregare]

I can't tale this BS. XP does the job do we really need and improved piece of sh*t i.e. Windows 7 whose only purpose is to enforce DRM. Let Windoze 7 die the terrible death it deserves. Xp does the job and it seems to do it well. What exactly does bloated DRM loaded Wincrap 7 bring to the table?

Re:So what?

[Sancho]

Yes, not everyone follows them, but maybe after a few security problems, they'll learn.

I wish I could mod you "naive".

Besides, there are still drive-by vulnerabilities to worry about. Vista+IE actually does a lot to mitigate and prevent vulnerabilities in the browser (Vista+Chrome also does a pretty good job.)

Re:So what?

[jo42]

You need to do a clean, minimal, from scratch XP install on your Mini. I did that with mine and don't see any of the things you say you are. Turning off all the pointless XP eye-candy crap really makes it feel snappy.

Re:So what?

[bertoelcon]

Who in "the industry" think this, exactly?

Those working at Microsoft?

Re:So what?

[Hurricane78]

It will. Because I will not support it at all. I started with Vista, which I personally never touched. I told them that I can't help them on that. If they actually *bought* Vista, I entirely stopped talking to them. Now it's nice and quiet, and the only questions I ever get, can be solved by ssh access to a bash shell.

I won't ever give that up. ^^

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

In other words, if they switched to Linux, they'd likely have the same problem? I'm guessing you can probably mess up your Linux box by running attachments, too.

Then you'd be guessing wrong.

I'm not guessing, I know that. ;) Or at least, mess up your user environment, if not the Linux box. But let's face it, if you're a single user with a single computer, you probably don't want rm -rf ~/* being run anymore than you'd want a virus installed on a Windows box...

Apparently, your understanding of Linux is lacking. Linux doesn't default to granting the user root privileges. And while technically it is possible for your scenario to take place, it would require the user to go out of their way to mess up their system's default configuration. Opening a file does not automatically execute that file, more likely you'd just see the malicious code displayed in a text editor.

Re:So what?

[bdenton42]

Count yourself lucky then. I had zero problems with viruses and the like until Blaster hit the scene and infected machines with no user interaction required at all. Even worse, a couple times when I had to do a reinstall of XP the machines became infected before Windows Update could install the needed security patches. It was a happy day when I got a XP SP2 reinstallation disk with a newer system that I could use on the older machines when needed.

Re:So what?

[morcego]

Internet Explorer's Protected stuff (which not one of the competitors has)

Don't you mean "which not one of the competitors NEED" ?

The main reason IE needs that is because it is so integrated into the O.S.

Re:So what?

[jpmorgan]

I thought the point of netbooks was to have a computer for accessing the internet and that's about it. Last I checked, Windows 7 could access the internet. I don't see the point in putting XP on your netbook at all.

Re:So what?

[Smivs]

Since XP can access the Internet, I don't see the point in putting Linux on your netbook either.

To get rid of the XP ?

Re:So what?

[thatskinnyguy]

It's within a company's best interest to cannibalize their own products. It was somewhat of a failure in this situation in that the market share previously held by XP wasn't overwhelmingly overtaken by Vista. Instead, of that segment of Vista non-adopters, the market share went to Apple or Linux or, more often than not, back to XP.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing you can probably mess up your Linux box by running attachments, too.

You Winduhs shills are pathetic with your lies. It is trivially simple to stop malicious email attachments in their tracks in Linux. Run the client in a chroot, run it as a different user with limited privileges, turn off the execute flag in the user's home directory. The list goes on and on. A user inexperienced enough to even open random email attachments is not going to be skilled enough to reverse any of these measures even if they wanted to.

Go suck some more Ballmer cock, obviously you like it.

Re:So what?

[master811]

You say it was faster in every benchmark, but really apart from the battery life (and even then), the differences between them were minimal to the point that unless you actually ran these benchmarks yourself, the average person would never notice the difference.
 
Hence in this case, the benefits of Win7 far outweigh the ever so slight reduction in battery life.

Re:So what?

[lukas84]

Don't you mean "which not one of the competitors NEED"

It's a passive security feature that's actually a good idea. There are lots of Firefox security issues and even more issues if you count usual browser plugins like Flash and Acrobat Reader.

Re:So what?

[Lennie]

I noticed the hardware of the netbook they used in the article is also a bit more beefy then 'the original netbooks', especially RAM.

Re:So what?

[EchaniDrgn]

they'll learn.

Been working in IT long have you? :-P

Re:So what?

[elrous0]

I use my netbook for a lot more than just surfing the internet. My Asus EEE will do about everything a full-powered laptop would do about 4-5 years back. I've watched videos, ran all kinds of software on it, videoconferenced with it, etc. The only things it CAN'T handle do are modern gaming and HD video (it will play HD video, but it stutters). Not bad for a book-sized computer that costs $250 (and now comes with a 160GB hard drive and 1 GB of memory).

Re:So what?

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I've ran XP for years and never had a security issue. Standard practices such as not opening attachments from people you don't know and keeping everything updated do wonderfully. Yes, not everyone follows them, but maybe after a few security problems, they'll learn.

So very true. I've not only run flavors of windows for years, but done so without antivirus or anti malware -- and never had* a virus unless I deliberately installed it to see it in action. (Yes, I periodically boot linux and run a CLAM scan of the hdd to make sure of that.) A few very simple steps:

• Do enable viewing of file extensions, hidden and OS files immediately.
• Do not open attachments that you have not specifically requested**. Do not EVER open an executable attachment .
• Save everything to hard drive before opening it - whether it be from a web page or email. The make sure it is what it is supposed to be.
• Disable file previewing in Windows Explorer.
• Disable HTML content in Windows Explorer.
• Always use Detail view in Windows Explorer.
• Disable flash except when you need it
• Disable Acrobat's behavior of launching embedded in the browser.
• Do not use Outlook Express or Outlook. (In more recent history, maybe the next item covers this.)
• Do disable HTML view on your mail client
• Do disable content downloading on your mail client.

In return you can run your PC happily for years without reformatting, and without the hideous performance hit associated with AV.

*Okay, you caught me. I had a Stoned variant on DOS 3.3 that I picked up from a floppy. First and last.
** In this age of script kiddie madness, virus propogation through modified executables seems

Re:So what?

[CannonballHead]

Linux doesn't default to granting root privileges, I know. And you don't need root privileges to delete files out of your own home directory. Hence the tilde before the slash: ~/* not /*

Linux does have executable files.

Now, I am not entirely certain it could have the +x flag set on the file after being an e-mailed attachment, though, actually. I could be mistaken there.

On the other hand, you could just bundle it up into an RPM, make it look "real" and people will "install" the "video." If you switch the average Windows user to Linux, they'll know even less about Linux than they do about Windows. They'll install RPMs (or whatever) as quickly as they will install Smilie Packs on Windows. If that means typing in their password - which they'd be used to, by now, if they've been installing updates - then they will type it in.

Re:So what?

[recoiledsnake]

Um, I just went through the article and XP was faster in basically every bench mark.

What feature does 7 provide you that is a huge benefit over XP, especially on a netbook?

Sandboxed IE, per application volume control, increased security(many of the security holes affecting XP over the past few weeks don't affect vista/7 or throw a UAC dialog) etc etc.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why does Win 2K cost more for a licence than XP? I think I am doing fine on my HP Mini after deleting some of the bloat(McAffee and whatever that sync shit was...).

And no I am not an Anon Coward....

--BynrdSkynrd

Re:So what?

[LoRdTAW]

Security? I thought their annoying popup windows for allow/deny stuff was cracked within a matter of weeks after release?

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am running Windows 7 on my work desktop and laptop. It is a vast improvement over ALL previous versions. . .

On my Netbook I did not accept the EULA for Windows XP Home. I contacted the vendor that sold it to me of this action and per the EULA I received a refund for the OS I am not using. I installed eeebuntu on the Netbook and it just hummmms...wifi is remembered where ever I have been. I run a full suite of applications for work fun etc and this Netbook just zooms along. IT is SWEEET !!!!!

Re:So what?

[BlackSnake112]

Win 7 has better battery life then XP pro or OSx on the SSD based mini 9 that I have. For regular hard drive based netbooks, XP pro should still rule. XP pro is slower then win 7 on the SSD based netbook that I have. The SSD in this mini looks more like RAM then a hard drive. The slot looks more like a mini PCI/E slot then a RAM or SATA connection. Which may have a lot to do with why XP pro on this netbook. XP loaded slower and ran sluggish on this netbook. It worked but for me it was not running correctly. I do not have and did not try XP home.

Battery life for me was OSX: 3 hours 20 minutes. XP: 3 hours 30 minutes. win 7: 5 hours. Ubuntu linux: 6 hours.

I charged the netbook to a full charge then used it (readign email, writing some docs, nothing really crazy) on the power saver settings for each OS. Linux got the best average time after 5 chrages. Win 7 did beat XP pro and OSX for my not official test.

Re:So what?

[Locutus]

which was the point of the expensive payment deals it took to get XP installed and Linux kicked off of many of them. Windows 7 now puts Microsoft back in some control of bumping the cost up because it is a "new" product or so they say. What is more important to Microsoft though is eliminating this sector and degrading the impression of the netbook market being anything like the laptop market as far as usability goes.That's why they're trying to rename the device and sector.

I sure wish the ARM devices would hit the market ASAP though or Microsoft might have enough time to kill off the market much like they did the PDA market. FYI, over a year before Handspring leaked they were exiting the PDA market, Microsoft was already paying companies to sell Windows CE based devices and flooding the market with WinCE devices and it also bled into the accessories market too. Doesn't anyone think it funny that only now are phones usable as computing devices now that their displays are large enough to support those? It was a nice move by Microsoft to use its billions in cash to move the market toward its products, effectively gut the only competitors income and then back off on that market once the damage is done. Microsoft may have to play this same game with the ARM netbooks and we already know they are paying, via marketing programs, enough to netbook OEMs for them to publicly apologies for the OEM showing an ARM netbook and also installing Windows above and over the Linux versions. If not completely eliminating the Linux models all together.

I've not seen Windows 7 on a netbook but I don't doubt a 1+GHz, 2GB, and harddisk based netbook will run Windows 7 but it won't run or have the performance of a sub 1GHz, 1GB, SSD based Linux netbook nor the battery life. And definitely not after security software is installed to protect it. But I doubt many will get to have that option or choice unless ARM devices get on the market by late Oct 09. IMO.

LoB

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Youse yur brane!

That's Mac's fault, with its "Even waterheads can use us!" GUI. I am one of the few people that have Notepad pinned to my Start button screen; and I know better to run a Antivirus on everything, including P2P...

As for *nix, anyone who wants to hack on a specific OS will write the code. If the 'morans' migrate to it, then we would be just a kvetching bunch of techies @ this website

Not an anon Coward...

-- BynrdSkynrd

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

This may be the greatest comment/review I have ever read on Slashdot. You are to be commended for this fine piece of work. Here! Here!

Re:So what?

[bonch]

The primary reason for using Windows 7 would be the improved security. Anything else is a bonus, like superior multicore processing and other foundation improvements accrued in the nine years since XP was released.

Re:So what?

[bonch]

Any imperceptible performance tradeoffs are worth the improved security foundations Windows 7 provides over XP. You'd have to have some really good reasons to willingly run a nine year old version of Windows on a computer devoted to internet access.

Re:So what?

[Enderandrew]

IE 8 and most of the security fixes exist on XP. So the reason to run Win7 is per process audio control? On a netbook, how many applications are you going to be running at once that are each outputting sound?

Re:So what?

[Enderandrew]

For the average user with a netbook, what are these benefits of Win 7?

I for one do really enjoy the new taskbar, but I feel that a good chunk of the UI in Vista/7 is still a huge regression. It takes more clicks to perform the same tasks.

The OS is slower, despite the claim that 7 is considerably faster than XP. It does use more memory, and often memory is limited on a netbook.

7 looks shiny and new, but the Seven Transformation Pack can replicate the appearance of Windows 7 on XP, including mimicing the appearance of the task bar.

Again, what are the huge benefits of 7?

Re:So what?

[gparent]

Okay, maybe I worded it wrong (the stupid anti-MS trolls still rated me funny, but whatever).

It's faster in the sense that it does more things than XP *and* manages to go at the same speed (the microbenchmarks were very slightly favorable towards XP as you've said, but nowhere significant).

However, by going for Windows 7, you get a better sound solution (Mixer, for instance), increased security via UAC, a non-IE dependant Windows Update, virtual store, etc., then on top of that you get a lot less reboots when installing software/drivers/updates, faster hibernation wakeup, generally faster disk I/O, and basically just a ton of nice things that XP just doesn't have.

Sure, maybe you'll boot up in 21 seconds instead of 20. But that extra second will get you a hundred features that in my opinion, are worth switching from an old, dead and now worthless operating system.

Re:So what?

[TheQuantumShift]

Because people don't want internet devices (even though that's all they need), they want portable, full-feature, cheap computers. Emphasis on the cheap.

Re:So what?

[master811]

Well security for one should be better, plus any netbook with an SSD will run far better on 7 than XP.
 
The old myth of Win 7(or even Vista) using more RAM simply isn't true. RAM is meant to be used/cached for the OS, not to sit there being unused. The memory management of 7 (and even Vista) is massive improvement over that of XP. Granted on a system with 512MB or less, Vista/7 will really struggle but with 2GB, (or even with 1GB), it still works well.
 
I've been running the 7 Beta/RC for the last 4 months or so (on a system with only 1GB) and it really isn't that bad at all. In fact it seems to really help manage Firefox's heavy RAM usage a times far better than XP ever did.

Re:So what?

[CaseCrash]

Seconded.

Re:So what?

[mdwh2]

With the rate of progress, netbooks will soon be comparable to today's desktops. Even "accessing the internet and that's about it" will require increasing resources, which, supposedly, Windows 7 will be better at handling.

Sure, XP will still do fine. I still run Windows 2000 on my desktop after all. And you can "access the Internet" on an Amiga 500 if you want.

Re:So what?

[mdwh2]

Or he could get a better computer and run Windows 7 on it. A better computer will always be better, obviously, but that doesn't change his point about how good the operating system is on given hardware.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh* Then maybe you should just go ahead and try that, so you can get over your silly belief.

Re:So what?

[Vexorian]

On my netbook I can browse the internet, write an essay in OpenOffice, watch 720p movies, run an FTP client, play CS:S. Upgrading to Windows 7 makes all of these things faster.

Nope. See the numbers in the article, everything is really quite the same performance-wise. So '7 it is a huge improvement since vista, but not that much since XP (In fact in many places XP is still faster, slightly faster, but there we go, speed is not a good reason...)

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you've made your mind up (more or less based on nothing resembling reality) why bother trying to convince you?

Re:So what?

[The End Of Days]

Run the client in a chroot, run it as a different user with limited privileges, turn off the execute flag in the user's home directory

Either your definition of trivial is somewhat different than the one I read in the dictionary, or you're operating under the belief that every user is going to somehow become a competent admin just by virtue of running a Linux system.

Re:So what?

[The End Of Days]

The main reason IE needs that is because it is so integrated into the O.S.

Are we back to the 1990s belief that IE somehow runs "in the kernel?" Can you Microsoft bashers at least get up to date on this stuff please? IE is no more "integrated into the OS" than any other application that uses a system library.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one do really enjoy the new taskbar, but I feel that a good chunk of the UI in Vista/7 is still a huge regression. It takes more clicks to perform the same tasks.

That's also the way with the Office 2007 ribbon. It makes sense if you think about it. As Microsoft adds more features (because they use them for product differentiation in marketing) they have to provide access to those features. That means that your menu item tree either gets deeper (leading to more clicks) or gets wider (leading to a confusion of options). Either way, you get more mouse travel per menu function.

You can try different approaches to deal with that. Back in Office 2000/3 they had tried to hide the options that you didn't use but they did it poorly, with a small memory capacity for what you used that forgot every time you restarted the apps. You often wound up needing to unhide everything to get what you wanted as a result and still had to deal with a huge menu tree. Maybe they could have kept those option profiles in documents and doc templates, with a couple of standard "hiding" profiles automatically chosen depending on your early function usage in a new document and customized from there. Instead we got the ribbon, a waste of screen surface area which they assumed would be acceptable because everybody would have screen resolutions of over 1024x768 due to cheap LCD panels.

Since Word and Excel no longer have separate panes or even tabs for each document, you now need multiple actions to switch between documents by going View->Switch Windows-> (because huge ribbons are OK but thin document tabs or separate windows are a waste of screen area). In fact, once you do anything more than basic formatting, pretty well most actions are going to require two widely spaced clicks for what once used to be a short click/hold->slide->release menu selection. But I'm not bitter.

Re:So what?

[obarthelemy]

I've just installed Windows 7, and I see the point now: 7 is much better than XP. The interface is what XP's should have been, and it's not too unfamiliar, as an XP user I can poke around fine.

With the various under-the-hood improvements, and if indeed performance is roughly the same, it's worth it, except for the DRM-everywhere problem.

Last I checked, a Commodore 64 could access the Internet, too.

Re:So what?

[p51d007]

If both OS's are pretty much equal in performance, I would rather have a "new" OS, than one that has had 3 patches, and continues to be patched. Plus, you know when 7 comes out, the other hardware vendors will probably drop "new" device drivers for XP.

Re:So what?

[DrGamez]

I'm not the target audience for this information but when I have to disable that many features then why even bother using it?

Re:So what?

[mhall119]

I sure wish the ARM devices would hit the market ASAP

They're on their way:
http://blogs.arm.com/smart-mobile-devices/first-taste-of-an-arm-powered-netbook-and-its-good/

Re:So what?

[mgblst]

So is IE less integrated into the OS than firefox, or opera? I don't think you can say that with a straight face.

Re:So what?

[cboslin]

...my Mini with 2 gigs...

I want a netbook that will run well with only 512MB or 1 GB of RAM. And with processors in the 600 - 800 mhz range, in other words, less than 1000 mhz processor speeds. Why, because its cheap and I am only using it to check mail and social media websites, its not my development machine (even if it is way more powerful then past development machines) How many GBs moves it out of the netbook range, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB...?

I know Linux will run in 512MB of RAM, I ran it this year in 128MB of RAM, so 512MB of RAM, no problem. And yes I prefer 1 GB of RAM as there is more memory for the applications.

I doubt that Windows anything, even XP, will out perform Linux on anything with 1 GB or less of RAM.

Anyone in their right mind would not consider running Vista without at least 4GB of RAM, even if it will run in 2GB. But Windows 7 to run well, what does it need, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB? Surely someone has benchmarked XP vs Windows 7 vs Linux on processors under 1000 mhz with RAM under 2 GB. Will Windows 7 run in less than 1 GB of RAM?

And do NOT even suggest a limited OS that will only let you run one or two software applications concurrently, that is NOT a solution to even consider as viable!

And what is the minimum processor speeds recommended for Windows 7?

Windows 7 has to extend Microsoft's life on the low end side or they can NOT afford to dump XP as all those computers will just migrate to Linux and possibly MacIntosh if their OS is supported on the hardware.

Why I tell people, make sure you buy a computer with Linux pre-installed from the manufacturer, even if you want to run Windows 7 or Vista, its the only way to make sure you avoid the proprietary hardware and software driver vendor lock-in crap from Microsoft, All BIOS writers except Coreboot, Intel, Nvidia, Seagate and many, many others. If your PC will run Linux from day one with video and sound without issues ~ very important, when Microsoft ends of lifes whatever software (and they will) they want you to buy, you still have options for that PC.

Any Linux box (Tower, Desktop PC, laptop or netbook) should run the following right out of the box, or do NOT buy it: Sound, Video (HD H.264, 30fps and higher), usb devices (all kinds: Micro SSD, keyboards, mouse, cameras, etc...), Wifi access, Ethernet 10/1000 (preferrably 10/100/1000), and without special licences to anyone, esp Microsoft or you will be hung out to dry down the road.

Personally I am tired of good equipment, laptops, PCs, desktops, towers getting end-of-lifed by Microsoft s forced upgrades and good equipment that could be used by others going into land fills. Its crazy!

Re:So what?

[cboslin]

... for progress ...

No survival, just saying.

... maybe I'm mistaken ...

You are if you ignore Microsoft s past of embrace, extend, obsolete, $$$ profit $$$

at some point the past "version" becomes so obsolete you may no longer wish to support it...

What you and I are willing to support is not the point nor the issue, it is what Microsoft has to do, obsolete it, pull support, in order to force people to upgrade and update their software so they can profit.

Not only could I do everything I needed to do from a business stand point on Windows 95/98, but I definitely could do everything with 2000.

The fact that any of those operating systems with a decent browser (obviously Internet Explorer is far from decent IMO, please do not get mad at me, it is Microsoft s fault for fighting against web standards, everything is factually on the record about this except for shills that refuse to acknowledge facts.) can access the cloud, where future applications are being ported to should not be lost on anyone, you or I. It is obviously not lost on Microsoft.

I have been using computers since before Microsoft was a company and have just been burned way too many times to care about them anymore. For me and many others, it is just about survival. Being able to be FREE (not as in money) to choose what applications we want to run, being able to secure our personal environment (PC and network) and not being forced to use anything we do not want to use, just because someone else wants to gouge and profit. Many of us are more than willing to pay for innovation, but when you stick an Intel inside sticker on it next to some MS sticker and claim innovation, many of us are smart enough to call BS! Just saying.

Re:So what?

[Locutus]

very promising but with 4-8 weeks shipping(boat), that's only 1-2 months at most to finalize production. Sure hope they hit production soon.

LoB

Re:So what?

[w0mprat]

Suckage is not just proprietary there's plenty of suckage in the free software universe.

Re:So what?

[recoiledsnake]

IE8 on XP does not have sandboxing. More details here http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/02/09/528963.aspx

Only IE7 and IE8 on Vista/7 support it and it has mitigated a lot of web based attacks on browsers(including the Flash vulnerability discussed recently that affected Windows/Linux/OS X). I was told by someone here that Firefox/Ubuntu will have it with the next release of Ubuntu in Oct 2009, but don't quote me on that.

The other reasons are the integrated search on start menu, better looking and functioning UI. One of the main reasons is that there's no real reason to stick to a 7 year OS that may not be well supported by MS in the future with functionality(USB 3.0, IE9) and security patches. So unless you absolutely need XP, there's no real to avoid 7 if you get it with a new PC. And there's always XP mode in some versions of 7.

Re:So what?

[Mountaineer1024]

Internet Explorer may not have been in the kernel, but key components of it were shared with the file manager and the windowing/desktop manager.
That's why it loaded so quickly.
That's why it ran so quickly.
That's why if you crashed it badly enough you ended up looking at your wallpaper with no icons, no start bar and (if you didn't know how to bring up the task manager) no clue as to how to make the computer "work" again without rebooting.

Re:So what?

[w0mprat]

Nope. See the numbers in the article, everything is really quite the same performance-wise. So '7 it is a huge improvement since vista, but not that much since XP (In fact in many places XP is still faster, slightly faster, but there we go, speed is not a good reason...)

Nope. Don't rely one article with one hardware set with one set of synthetic benchmarks to draw generalisations. There will be some hardware configurations that may beat xp in benchmarks. XP doesn't have NUMA for example.

Re:So what?

[cbhacking]

XP is actually *really bad* at accessing the Internet by modern standards.

• Shitty firewall. It's better than nothing, but it still sucks.
• IPv6 is kind of hacked in, and lacks some features.
• It is *terrible* at managing multiple network cards (if you have a WiFI Internet connection and a local-only wired connection, you can't access the Internet. It'll route through the ethernet cord only).
• Similar to the above, it fails at sharing a wireless connection over a wired network (handy for places with restrictive or expensive wireless access).
• No Protected Mode for Internet Explorer, even if the user chooses to upgrade. It's still the world's most-used browser, and really should run in that sandbox.
• Everybody runs as Administrator, because that's the default and it's a pain in the ass to do many things from a standard account. Would you run your web browser as root in Linux?
• Really shitty built-in email client. WIndows Mail may *look* like Outlook Express at the superficial level, but is much more powerful (spam filtering, rules, instant search, and lots of other improvements)
• That idiotic interface for WiFi passwords (the characters are masked, and you have to enter the key twice. WTF?!?)

Yeah, it still mostly works, but the OS is pushing 8 years old and had some terrible design flaws from the start. Let it die, already.

Re:So what?

[aqk]

1.5MB of RAM? Wow. Thats really light-weight, even for Windows 7!

And this is modded "funny"?
One more reason why I spend less and less time on /. ...
Of course we all know its a typo, weenie.
But with the current /. intellect, we understand why it's modded "funny"
Lissen, weenie- whenI grew up, we had to walk 640Km to school through the snow every day, and then had to eat Mbites of potatochips, just to impress the idiot jocks (who are now all Sales millionaires, and now breed with our sisters)
Now, I have to endure gigachuckles like the above quote.
I could say more, but my nephew is making fun of my idiot Linux interface. I gotta go tear a bite off of him!
/. ain't what it used ta be...
! Hostie tabarnak!

Re:So what?

[Arker]

IE is no more "integrated into the OS" than any other application that has been chopped up and hidden inside system libraries.

Fixed that for you.

Re:So what?

[drsmithy]

Speaking of that, WTF is up with all the virtual machine stuff? Isn't the OS supposed to isolate application data and code from each other and provide a robust abstraction so applications run nicely with each other? Oh wait, Microsofts applications crash the OS so much and therefore crash other applications, you can't run a business system with more than one app running on one piece of hardware. So lets' virtualize them....

It's pretty clear you are in no position whatsoever to be offering opinions on virtualisation.

Re:So what?

[adolf]

Careful with that sort of crazy talk around here. Folks 'round these parts just don't take too kindly of anyone who says that Linux is insecure because it's got itself a human in front of it.

I guess they reckon that Linux makes people smart enough not to ruin their own computers anymore.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Faster than what?

We installed Windows 7 and Windows XP on identical Dell Mini's. There was absolutely no comparison in terms of speed. Windows 7 may be faster than the crippled Vista, but it's as slow as all hell compared to XP.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

What netbook allows you to run CS:S?

Re:So what?

[ookaze]

But you're wrong anyway.
You're just taking the worst example you can with what some user willing to destroy his data COULD do on Linux and try to portray it as a common thing that every user on Linux has a chance of doing some hypothetical day.
The example is absurd because this user should switch between knowledgeable and ignorant state at several points to achieve your nonsense scenario.
You don't even have anecdotal evidence, but it won't stop you.
BTW, I have anecdotal evidence : 9 years of ignorant people running under Linux and receiving attachments in their mail, and never once they got their home directory deleted, or anything nasty like viruses. If pirates wanted users home directory deleted, don't worry that most Windows computers would be dead by now, or at least without any of their precious personal data.

Linux doesn't default to granting root privileges, I know. And you don't need root privileges to delete files out of your own home directory. Hence the tilde before the slash: ~/* not /*

Linux does have executable files.

Now, I am not entirely certain it could have the +x flag set on the file after being an e-mailed attachment, though, actually. I could be mistaken there.

Your example is pure nonsense as attachments don't have executable bits set.
You obviously stated a worst possible scenario that tends to be on the absurd side, without even knowing how Linux desktops, apps and OS work. Well done!

On the other hand, you could just bundle it up into an RPM, make it look "real" and people will "install" the "video." If you switch the average Windows user to Linux, they'll know even less about Linux than they do about Windows. They'll install RPMs (or whatever) as quickly as they will install Smilie Packs on Windows. If that means typing in their password - which they'd be used to, by now, if they've been installing updates - then they will type it in.

Nonsense again. You'll at least get security warnings, if it's even possible to do what you say, which I'm pretty sure isn't possible (you usually have to save these files somewhere first). Contrary to videos that play immediately when you click on them (actually, you will be presented with several choices, but never "execute this" one of them), it will be so different from the usual process to look at a video that the ignorant user will most likely abandon right there saying the video doesn't work.

Re:So what?

[Weeksauce]

I would fully agree with you on the new Firewall. It's especially nice in conjunction with new Wifi for those who connect to a lot of different hotspots. The groups are general enough that any idiot, like my parents, can figure it out.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

This also apples to dumping xp for Linux. Ant it will run faster than xp or 7 on the same hardware and will run where the ms os won't. This will be the biggest impediment to arm based netbooks getting the price below $200

Re:So what?

[ground.zero.612]

What you and I are willing to support is not the point nor the issue, it is what Microsoft has to do, obsolete it, pull support, in order to force people to upgrade and update their software so they can profit.

So a company based in a capitalist market is no longer supposed to profit? Well that sucks, I wish someone had told the rest of the world. It seems you missed my point about obsolescence... It's not what anyone or any company has to do, it's just a natural side effect of the progression of technology and biology. While I'm sure that Windows 95/98 ran QuickBooks just fine for your small business; you must realize that as new useful technologies emerge (like the ARPANET going public) they may compromise the integrity of the old features. Thus, rendering the old, obsolete.

The rest of your comment sounds more like a Communist Hippy "free-zealot" rant against capitalism and choice. You see, I use computers and software as specialized tools. I believe that capitalism is the best economic system for giving me the choice of which tools to use and from who I may buy them. You may have no use for any of Microsoft's products, but that certainly doesn't mean you should ignore the majority's needs. If it isn't clear to you by now, the free market has determined that Microsoft's products do what the vast majority of people need them to. Being that we're in a free market, if this wasn't true, their leading competitors would quickly devour Microsoft's share of the market.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

slower then

????

Do you speak English motherfucker ?

Or some half-assed backwards gringo-ization ?

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your example is pure nonsense as attachments don't have executable bits set.
You obviously stated a worst possible scenario that tends to be on the absurd side, without even knowing how Linux desktops, apps and OS work. Well done!

I like how it was explicitly stated, within the part that you yourself quoted no less, that the poster wasn't sure whether executable bits could be transferred across email.

Especially since for all that that information isn't preserved on a raw emailed file, there is nothing stopping the files from being archived and sent with that information intact within the archive...

would be nice if they fixed RAID in windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

trying to mirror 1TB drives without success using RAID-1 in software on windows 7 resulted in corrupted drives. would be nice if M$ fixed that first. also the black screen when installing windows 7 on a modern HD4850 from ATI would be nice. win7 is still not ready for prime time.

Re:would be nice if they fixed RAID in windows 7

[TheNetAvenger]

We're running several RAID configurations, even on many of our notebooks with dual-HD configurations. RAID 0, RAID 1, etc...

Not sure what issue you are seeing, but maybe you should complain to the HD Controller MFR as this would be the first place to yell, as they not only make the driver, but once the OS passes off HD read/write commands to the driver and then the HD Controller for the RAID, the OS has little to do with what happens then.

I personally know that some RAID MFRs are crap sadly, but even running Linux, the drivers are and HD controllers are still crap.

Haven't seen the ATI Black screen, unless it sets your video mode to a native resolution and you havea 1990s monitor, but even then it should pop back or you could reboot and adjust this in safe mode.

Re:would be nice if they fixed RAID in windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

he said SOFTWARE RAID. i've had this problem as well. it involves the resync/resbuild process which fails.
you click on resync and it resyncs to healthy and then about half a minute later with software raid windows 7 marks the raid array as degraded. sync is seriously broken. hardware raid just works but is not portable if your controller fails.

Re:would be nice if they fixed RAID in windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it depends what he meant by "software raid". The "professional" editions of Windows have built-in software raid requiring no special hardware. Then there are things like built-in raid on motherboards which are actually implemented in software. If it's the former, Microsoft is to blame. If it's the latter, Microsoft is not to blame. Or maybe he was using special hardware (controller, etc) that has a faulty driver in the IO stack.

Re:would be nice if they fixed RAID in windows 7

[Anonymous Coward]

you cant adjust in safe mode cuz the installer wont let you. it does not allow you to start up first time in safe mode.

Re:would be nice if they fixed RAID in windows 7

[DigiShaman]

It could be that you have bad RAM or the timing is incorrect. Have you ran memory diagnostics (through Windows or Memtest86) yet? If not, I highly recommend that you do so.

This sound a little like

[Anonymous Coward]

Doom 2 versus Quake 2 on a 386.

Re:This sound a little like

[revengebomber]

Silly Coward, Quake and its sequels require floating point units.

Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[AKAImBatman]

(Sorry, this is somewhat offtopic, but it was the first thing I thought of when I saw the comparison between Windows XP and Windows 7.)

I once saw someone here on Slashdot mention that Microsoft should not have shipped a 32-bit version of Vista, opting instead to push only the 64-bit version. While it seemed like an odd statement at the time (despite the fact that my home XP machine was an AMD64 processor), I find myself agreeing with it on Windows 7.

As it stands today, 32-bit Windows is quickly becoming too small for many business and industrial uses, and it's very affordable to build a high-performance home machine with more than 4GB of RAM. (Case in Point.) In fact, with intensive web applications and sophisticated desktop tools (yeah, some of them are bloated) chewing more memory than ever before, it just doesn't make sense to get anything less than 4GB (nay, 3GB if you're running Windows 32-bit!) except for a few edge cases.

Unfortunately, Windows has been kind of lagging on the 64-bit front. By treating it as sort of a bastard child (like they treated all their non-i386 NT versions), Microsoft managed to ensure that hardware manufacturers wouldn't make an effort to support 64-bit windows in a non-server environment. Which is frustrating as I've started bumping up against that once-awesome 4GB barrier.

In an attempt to turn this into a slightly more useful conversation rather than a one-sided rant, I was wondering if I could get some opinions on using virtualization as a solution? With Windows' poor track record as a 64-bit OS, I have been thinking about running a 64-Bit Unix and virtualizing 32-bit windows for backward compatibility. I've already had some success with virtualizing Windows 7 on a MacBook, and have even been able to get desktop integration working. (Quite spiffy that. Though the two interfaces occasionally confuse my wife. She's the primary user of Windows, needing support for some specialized programs with no real alternatives available.)

Does anyone here have experience with setting up a system like this? Do you use Xen, VMWare, Sun VirtualBox/OpenxVM, or some other solution? What do you use as your primary OS? Linux has come a long way, but the upgrade treadmill is still frustrating. Especially with the seemingly regular ABI upgrades. Does anyone use [Open]Solaris x86_64 as a host? Do you have 3D Graphics completely disabled, or have you found a good way to allow all OSes solid and reliable access to the underlying graphics card? Do you bother with mounting virtual shared drives to move data between the OSes, or do you have a home NAS for storing data? (I'm leaning toward a NAS myself.)

Just a few thoughts, anyway. Thanks in advance for experiences & suggestions! :-)

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[zehaeva]

The RC of Win7 was released as both a 64bit version and a 32bit version. While they may not be pushing it, 64bit computing is making inroads into the consumer market.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[lyml]

The intel atom cpu is 32 Bit. Shipping no 32 bit whatsoever would eliminate you from this very popular market.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[Chaos Incarnate]

The "bastard child" appellation applies to XP 64. Under Vista, hardware manufacturers have been pretty good about providing 64-bit support, as far as I can tell.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[sexconker]

May have been me.

32-bit should have died with XP.
Vista should have been 64-bit only.

No existing applications / devices that were 32-bit only had to worry, there was still 32-bit XP dammit.

But ok, whatever, fuck it, Intel was still flogging 32-bit CPUs for some reason, and people are morons. Fine.

But Windows 7? WHY THE FUCK do we need 32-bit versions of Windows 7? FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKK

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[idiotnot]

Because you can just go out and grab a $300 netbook with 6GB of RAM, right? Even if you could, not all of the Atom processors support EMT64, though the most-popular ones do.

32-bit is still faster for a lot of things, too. The i486 has been around for 20 years now, amd64 not so long. The compilers haven't quite caught up.

To Microsoft's credit, they are requiring 64-bit for a lot of their enterprise products now. IIRC, Exchange 2007 and SQL 2008 both require either 2k3 or 2k8 64-bit.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[0racle]

Why not have 32bit? There is no real compelling reason for most people to have a 64bit OS so why force people to buy all new hardware when what you're trying to do is sell an OS? Most people that brag about having a 64bit system have no idea what they're talking about, they just brandish it around and keep yammering on about it like it's some awesome thing.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[Anonymous Coward]

I think pre-installed base of 32-bit only processors is the reason. MS always picks installed base over elegance.

As far as 64-bit, 2008 x64 seems nicely supported. Even the gaming/x-fi stuff is working in 64-bit. Great host for all my vmware vms plus fine native gaming. 2008 R2/Win7 promise much of the same plus a betterer wddm.

And you can see the future. Sharepoint and Exchange will be forceing 64-bit. Office will have 64-bit flavors which will be come the default when the installed base is there.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[Kenja]

Do you want to tell him about XP 64, or shall I?

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[dnaumov]

Unfortunately, Windows has been kind of lagging on the 64-bit front. By treating it as sort of a bastard child (like they treated all their non-i386 NT versions), Microsoft managed to ensure that hardware manufacturers wouldn't make an effort to support 64-bit windows in a non-server environment. Which is frustrating as I've started bumping up against that once-awesome 4GB barrier.

Please, stop spewing bullshit. Just stop. For almost 2 years now, it has been a requirement to provide both 64 and 32 bit Vista drivers if a manufacturer wanted to get the WHQL stamp of approval. And these same Vista drivers install and work just fine on 64bit Windows 2008 Server as well, I know, because I actually run 64bit Win2008 on a rather obscure combination of hardware and haven't had any issues. I am sure some old hardware does exist that still doesn't have 64bit drivers for Vista/2008, but you really really need to try to actually find such hardware.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[mkrup99]

Before you jump to that extreme, have you tried running the 64-bit versions of Vista or 7 on your machine? A lot has changed since Vista dropped back in 2006, and compatibility has drastically improved. I'm currently running the Windows 7 RC on two machines, both in 64-bit flavor, and have had no problems thus far with driver or software compatibility. Try downloading a copy of the release candidate and give it a test run, as I think you will find this to be a much simpler and more effective (not to mention much, much faster/better performing) alternative. If you still have problems, then you can jump to virtualization. But even then, consider VirtualPC or VirtualBox on 64-bit 7 running a 32-bit 7 client.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[idiotnot]

No existing applications / devices that were 32-bit only had to worry, there was still 32-bit XP dammit.

Anyone know if the XP-mode of Windows 7 is available in the 64-bit version? (I haven't tried it)

But ok, whatever, fuck it, Intel was still flogging 32-bit CPUs for some reason, and people are morons. Fine.

PAE, which allows up to 36GB on 32-bit. Intel has another 64-bit architecture, dontchaknow....it's called Itanium. They didn't license the amd64 instruction until Microsoft decided to embrace "X64."

In a lot of respects, it was a bad decision, as it badly breaks a lot of backwards compatibility (this is why 16-bit Windows apps no longer run), but it is what it is. (not to mention stupid stuff that POWER, MIPS, and Sparc figured out, like how to access 64-bit registers in 32-bit mode, etc. etc.)

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[iamapizza]

Somewhere out there in the ether is a blog post or a transcript by someone at Microsoft mentioning that Windows 2008 would be the last 32 bit OS. They would then push 64-bit everywhere.

It didn't happen. Windows 7 is coming out (I don't care if it's Vista Redux, it's another OS) and it's still available in 32-bit. Not want. As for your question, to be completely vague - I'm using Windows 2008 x64 as a primary OS. It sucks that 32-bit will continue to exist, and judging by the reviews already, it's going to be around for a long time. There go any hopes for decent support for x64 on Windows.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you have your reasons for saying Windows has been lacking in the 64-bit field but would you care to share?

I have been running Windows 7 RC 64-bit without issues, is smooth and I have yet to find an scenario that doesn't work... MPC HC 64-bit was the only 64-bit app I found that is unstable so I installed the 32-bit version (on my 64-bit Windows) until they fix the issues.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[sexconker]

Because having 2 versions makes shit harder for those who make hardware, for consumers who are confused, and for software developers, who will take the lazy route and support 32-bit primarily, while shafting the 64-bit users with shoddy, half-assed implementations and support.

64-bit is fucking awesome when done right. In many cases you can get more than double the performance vs 32-bit (anything to do with photos, audio, video, etc. decoding, editing, encoding, etc, or sciency shit, or porn simulators.). Add on the ability to natively address more RAM than the paltry 4 GB, and you've got yourself a winner.

You want 32-bit instead of 64-bit? You have legacy hardware and drivers and shit? You're a goob? Last I checked you could still buy 32-bit XP licenses, and your current licenses wouldn't expire.

I'd also like you to show me a case where someone who wanted to upgrade from XP to Vista/7 would be able to (no hardware changes needed) go with the 32-bit version of Vista/7, but not the 64-bit version.

Odds are it's because of a printer or wifi adapter that doesn't have a 64-bit driver.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[the_humeister]

Well not quite. There are 64-bit Atom processors. However, they're currently not being used in the mini-notebooks. Those are currently use the N series of chips which are 32-bit only.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[Narishma]

Because you can just go out and grab a $300 netbook with 6GB of RAM, right? Even if you could, not all of the Atom processors support EMT64, though the most-popular ones do.

You probably meant the most popular ones don't. Only the desktop versions of Atom (230 and 330) support 64bits and those are very rare. The most popular are the N and Z series which you find in most if not all netbooks and UMPCs and those are 32bits only.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[DAldredge]

That was in reference to the server division.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[maxume]

We probably don't need it, but I bet millions of people are willing to buy it.

(Personally, I will probably upgrade to Windows 7 when I buy a new computer and 64 bit will probably be a shopping point, but I don't expect everybody to wait)

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[PitaBred]

64bit programs are still "bastard children" under Windows, because they're trying to keep everything as backwards compatible as possible.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft managed to ensure that hardware manufacturers wouldn't make an effort to support 64-bit windows in a non-server environment.

I noticed the other day when pricing a low-end ($500) home Dell model that 64-bit Vista was the default OS choice. It hasn't been that way until recently, which is why it popped out at me.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[jonbryce]

If you want decent graphics, you need to run it on a Mac for OK graphics performance, or run it natively. None of the other platforms offer anything like as good graphics performance, mainly because their target market isn't interested in it.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[morgan_greywolf]

The "bastard child" appellation applies to XP 64. Under Vista, hardware manufacturers have been pretty good about providing 64-bit support, as far as I can tell.

Really? Well, then you don't have a Broadcom 5700, 5701, or 5702 NIC. These NICs work fine on 64-bit Linux with the tg3 driver, but on Vista, they're not even supported. You have to use the XP driver, which doesn't work right.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[the_humeister]

Because you can just go out and grab a $300 netbook with 6GB of RAM, right? Even if you could, not all of the Atom processors support EMT64, though the most-popular ones do.

32-bit is still faster for a lot of things, too. The i486 has been around for 20 years now, amd64 not so long. The compilers haven't quite caught up.

To Microsoft's credit, they are requiring 64-bit for a lot of their enterprise products now. IIRC, Exchange 2007 and SQL 2008 both require either 2k3 or 2k8 64-bit.

I disagree. At least on x86-64 there's almost a doubling of the number of registers (twice the number of general purpose and SIMD FP registers). This greatly reduces the register pressure for compilers, which have been keeping up with processors thus far. For example, I use Povray a lot. I can guarantee you that a custom compiled 64-bit binary will definitely render faster than a custom compiled 32-bit binary on the same system.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[jonbryce]

XP mode runs a copy of XP in Virtual PC, so I would imagine so.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[morgan_greywolf]

I am sure some old hardware does exist that still doesn't have 64bit drivers for Vista/2008, but you really really need to try to actually find such hardware.

Well, you don't need to try too hard if you have older Dell or HP equipment. See what I mean?

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[CannonballHead]

XP x64 was awful, unstable, etc. Vista x64 wasn't too bad. I'm using Win 7 RC x64 and it is working very well, actually, and I haven't run into anything (casual gamer, programmer, use Sibelius and East West sound libraries extensively) that I haven't been able to do... except for one piece of hardware that lacked 64 bit drivers (a rather old 1x1 midiman box).

I initially upgraded to Vista x64 for the RAM issue. I love using Linux, but it wasn't an option since I mostly use my desktop for music (Sibelius is Mac/PC only, does not run well in Wine or virtualized due to midi support, I think... plus there's the sound samples/library issue...) and games (obviously not going to work best on Linux... under wine or virtualized), so it only made sense to install a 64 bit version of Windows. Vista x64 was ok and I didn't have many problems. Windows 7 RC x64 has impressed me so far.

Is it better or worse than Windows? It's stable so far. I'm not stupid, so it's plenty secure for me. Antivirus doesn't slow it down much, etc. I haven't had any software or hardware issues, I haven't had any crashes. In fact, I've had more trouble with Ubuntu running on my older Dell E1505 laptop than I have had with Win7.

I've used VMWare, Xen, and VirtualBox. I like VirtualBox from the "ease" perspective. VMWare was a little more clunky. But I guess the real question is why do you want to virtualize Win 7 instead of just running it? Win 7 x64 is fine... unless there's something you want from a Linux distro that is lacking in Windows, I don't see why - if Windows is more convenient for whatever reason - you don't just run it.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[InsaneProcessor]

Buy a Lenovo or Samsung 12" netbook witht the NANO processor. Full 64 bit (cheaper than Atom in the Lenovo), faster than the atom and the graphics processor kicks The GMA's butt. Running 64 bit Win7 with no problems.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[spyowl]

But Windows 7? WHY THE FUCK do we need 32-bit versions of Windows 7? FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKK

Why? Intel Atom - N and Z series cannot execute the x86-64 instruction set. Aren't netbooks (in which those Atom processors are used) major part of Windows 7 implementation? Isn't it what this article is about? Where is the securty? Is this the right hotel?

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[idiotnot]

I went and looked at a few before I posted, and had the model numbers mixed up. That they didn't was my initial thought, since I was thinking about Atom's heritage. Some of the newer ones (230) do.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[heffrey]

Atom is the justification

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[dnaumov]

I am sure some old hardware does exist that still doesn't have 64bit drivers for Vista/2008, but you really really need to try to actually find such hardware.

Well, you don't need to try too hard if you have older Dell or HP equipment. See what I mean?

You do realise that your own link contains download links for the 64bit Vista and Win2008 drivers?

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[Anonymous Coward]

I have 32-bit computers that are perfectly capable of running 7. I would like to do so as it is such an absurd improvement over Vista that its not even funny. I'm sure there are lots of people who feel the same way. Just because you think 32-bit is inferior doesn't mean there aren't still compelling reasons to support it.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[jpmorgan]

64-bit hasn't been a bastard child since Vista. You can't get WHQL driver certification without a 100% feature complete 64-bit driver. I haven't seen any hardware without a 64-bit driver in a couple of years now.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[bored]

The real problem with 64-bit windows isn't the drivers, nor is it the fact that there are so few 64-bit clean applications out there. The real problem is the installed base of 16-bit applications. Last month I purchased a couple of educational games for my 3 year old. Turns out they are 16-bit, and won't run on a 64-bit OS. The developer doesn't have any plans to update them. This is far from unusual, I've been running 64-bit windows on one of my machines since the beta releases (a couple months after the initial opterons became available, it just took another year and a half for Ms to release it). That was a long time ago, and while lots of things work that didn't initially (.net support for example) some things never will.

That is because all 16 bit operations were removed from long mode, so MS didn't integrate any kind of 16-bit compatibility layer in windows. The only choice is a virtual machine. So, while getting a 32-bit application with a 16 bit installer is getting rarer, there are whole classes of applications which work just fine on a 32-bit OS but not on the 64-bit version. I expect that this short sight is part of the reasoning for XP compatibility mode via a VM in win7. Usually, the OS just acts like an older version for particular apps. That is because every version of the OS since w2k (maybe earlier) has had compatibility modes going back to very old versions of windows (right click your application, properties, compatibility ). From the average user of this site, that doesn't mean anything because they only see the small minority of applications that are very popular and therefor are updated regularly. The total set of windows applications is much larger, many of which run in niche markets, or are company specific. For example, I have a very capable eeprom burner which is driven by a 16-bit application, and doesn't work for a shit in a VM.

Also, it is possible to support more than 4G of ram with 32-bit windows, you just have to have a version that supports PAE, something Ms has been silently trying to kill, and has been helped by willful ignorance by a lot of people.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[Abcd1234]

I disagree. At least on x86-64 there's almost a doubling of the number of registers (twice the number of general purpose and SIMD FP registers).

And also a doubling of the size of every pointer, meaning an inflation in the size of every instruction, causing an increase in the number of cache misses and an increase in the size of application binaries which means greater memory usage.

64-bit is *not* a panacea. It's better in some cases, worse in others, and which is better, 32-or 64-bit, depends entirely on workload.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[jpmorgan]

Yes, but those are 5+ years old and there are no Vista drivers at all, neither 32-bit nor 64-bit. So your post is completely irrelevant.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[zealot]

Atom has 64-bit support built in, and Intel disables it on most parts to a) to provide market segmentation and b) to save a bit of power. If MS had made Win7 64-bit only, Intel simply would have flipped the switch and sold the Atoms as 64-bit.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[Anonymous Coward]

So how are those 16bit programs working with the backwards compatibility?

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[PinkyGigglebrain]

Don't you just love how you get all these replies but no answers?

I've been using a VM to run some Windows only games and misc. application, kind of sounds like what your looking for so here is the run down;
Hardware is a HP laptop with a dual core AMD Turion 64 bit running at 2GHz with 4G RAM.

I use the amd64 version of Debian Etch with KDE3.5 and Sun's VirtualBox 2.2.4 for those MS Windows applications that I still need to use, currently 1 old game and some file conversion apps that I'm still figuring out the Linux versions of.

Setting up VB was a breeze, just follow the instructions on the site to add the repositories and use apt-get to install. Once VB is installed it has a set-up wizard to create the VMs so that part is a snap, just accept the defaults at first, you can fine tune them later. My experience has been that VB's interface is intuitive and direct, everything you need is easy to find and the best part for me was that I didn't have to jump though any registration hoops like I did with VMware. Also the on line support forums are very usefull when you have questions or need to tweak something a particular way.

Installing XP in the new VM was simple, direct and effortless, no special drivers needed by XP If you use a bootable iso of a Win XP install disk as your VM's "CD drive" the install is fast. Once you have your base XP VM you can update it and install the "Guest Additions"(login to your new XP VM and look under "Devices" on the VM's toolbar). From there your ready to go, I exported the VM at this point so I have my base image.

Another fun thing about VB is you can use its "seemless mode" to put the Windows toolbar/Start button on the KDE desktop and the Windows apps look like they are part of KDE desktop, your wife will love it.

I don't know how usefull this is going to be but I hope it helps.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[limaxray]

Have you tried using 64-bit Vista on the desktop though? It's really not that straight forward. Not everyone bothers with WHQL certification, and not every application plays nice on a 64-bit platform. I put it on my laptop for a period of time but had issues with a number of 3rd party apps and drivers behaving incorrectly. I was able to manage most of the time (the majority of my problems were with games), but the show stopper for me was the OpenVPN drivers - I just couldn't get the OpenVPN drivers to work at all. All-in-all, it just wasn't worth the headache (didn't really need 64-bit other than for the shits and giggles)and back went 32-bit XP. I'm not sure who is more to blame here - MS or the 3rd parties - but in any case it wasn't a pleasant experience.

OTOH, I've been running 64-bit Ubuntu for years now without an issue (except for Flash, but that's been resolved by Adobe). To the user, there is no difference between the 32-bit or 64-bit install and everything 'just works'. I realize this has a lot to do with the nature of Linux, the use of package management and my specific hardware, but I have to agree 64-bit Windows does feel like a bastard child in comparison.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[massysett]

The intel atom cpu is 32 Bit. Shipping no 32 bit whatsoever would eliminate you from this very popular market.

Paul Thurott says Windows 7 will be the last 32-bit Windows although with the popularity of Atom I wonder if this will be true, even if the next Windows release takes another eight years.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[wastedlife]

PAE is a hack, and you are stuck with the same amount of addressable memory per process as you are with normal 32-bit addressing. Also, a correction, PAE adds up to 64 GB, with a 36 bit address space.

The Itanium architecture fails because of total lack of backwards compatibility with 32-bit without emulation. Also, even after licensing the amd64 instruction set, they continued to make CPUs without it. And now, even with a WinXP VM included with Win7, they are still making x64 CPUs that won't support the required virtualization tech. Intel just can't seem to get their shit together with 64-bit.

As far as accessing 64-bit registers in 32-bit mode, I thought that was one of the things that "VT-x" or whatever adds. I know that after enabling that I was able to run 64-bit guests VMs on my 32-bit host system.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[Atlantis-Rising]

I must admit, I don't know what you mean. XP x64 was a dog, I know, although a lot of people quite liked it.

But for about a year and half I've been running Vista x64, and I have noticed absolutely no problems. Certainly, I have had no problems with hardware support (although a few of my x16 games won't work... shame, really), and in fact, many PC manufacturers are preinstalling x64 Vista on their PCs.

I've also been testing Windows 7 x64 RC lately, and I've had absolutely no problems with that, either, even on a variety of custom-built hardware.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[recoiledsnake]

I am sure some old hardware does exist that still doesn't have 64bit drivers for Vista/2008, but you really really need to try to actually find such hardware.

Well, you don't need to try too hard if you have older Dell or HP equipment. See what I mean?

You do realise that your own link contains download links for the 64bit Vista and Win2008 drivers?

Oh Cmon, Give him/her a break, (s)he just suffers from this ---> http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/07/25/1757253/Linus-Calls-MicrosoftHatred-a-Disease

Evidence? http://slashdot.org/~morgan_greywolf/journal/219467

http://slashdot.org/~morgan_greywolf/journal/226315

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[bonch]

Arstechnica has an amusing fact about Microsoft's devotion to backwards compatibility:

This gives rise to particularly stupid things like the name of the "system" folder, where all the Windows libraries and programs are kept. In 16-bit Windows, it was called system. In 32-bit Windows, it was called system32. In 64-bit Windows it's called, er, system32 again. Because although there's an API call that programs can make to find out the name of the folder, there are enough programs that don't bother using it and just blindly assume that it's called system32 (even when compiled as 64-bit) that it was better for backwards compatibility to leave it, even though it's chock full of 64-bit files.

32-bit files in turn go into a directory named syswow64. Right, it has 64 in the name, because it contains 32-bit libraries. Make sense? Only in Redmond. All these strange behaviors and clumsy APIs that they've built up over the years have just been plonked wholesale into 64-bit Windows. There's no escape from them.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[Minimalist360]

I'm running Windows 2008 x64 on my Intel Atom computer. It's a great little in-office staging server, with x64 Sql Server and Windows. Oh, and it's dual core.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[Draek]

Because most people get whatever their OEM will sell them and stick with it 'til they buy something newer, and those of us who build our own jumped ship to 64-bits *years* ago.

The market of "people not ready to upgrade their 32-bit hardware looking for a new OS" is statistically insignificant.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[MooseMuffin]

I run 64-bit Vista and everything 'just works' - old and new games included.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[the_humeister]

Can you provide a link? I'm having trouble finding a Nano-based Lenovo computer.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[BlackSnake112]

The PAE switch doesn't always work as written. I used it in server 2003 32 bit. The machine worked fine for a while. Then after a few updates (the updates killed it) I needed to drop the RAM to 3GB to get the machine to have clear video. I thought the video card went bad at first. It was not the case. Removing 1 GB of RAM fixed the issue. I wanted a stable and safe machine. 3 GB of RAM was plenty for what I did on that machine.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[PitaBred]

That's what I was referring to ;)

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[the_humeister]

And also a doubling of the size of every pointer, meaning an inflation in the size of every instruction, causing an increase in the number of cache misses and an increase in the size of application binaries which means greater memory usage.

64-bit is *not* a panacea. It's better in some cases, worse in others, and which is better, 32-or 64-bit, depends entirely on workload.

While true, on x86-64, the the positives tend to outweigh the negatives. However, on architectures where 64-bit was not an afterthought, the negatives seem to outweigh the positives.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Add on the ability to natively address more RAM than the paltry 4 GB, and you've got yourself a winner.

Intel's 32-bit processors have 36 address lines so 32-bit operating systems can address 64GB of RAM. Obviously a single process can't map more than 4GB at once, but multiple processes (or a single process that handles its own mapping) can use more than 4GB of RAM total. Every version of Windows since 2000 has supported this. Except that Windows also has a license check that disables RAM above 4GB on non-enterprise editions of Windows. If you disable this check (by hacking the code) then 32-bit Windows will happily support more than 4GB.

Microsoft will tell you that you need 64-bit if you want more than 4GB, but this is purely marketing. There is no technical reason for this limit. Don't believe the lies.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[xlsior]

But Windows 7? WHY THE FUCK do we need 32-bit versions of Windows 7?

At the launch of Vista, MS stated that it would be the last 32-bit OS and that the next one would be 64-bit only.

Now fast-forward a little, and observe the dismal marketing failure that Vista turned into - for a big part thanks to application incompatibilities and the lack of drivers for many hardware components out on the market. To the average Joe, Vista == problems, especially thanks to all the media attention it received over these issues.

Microsoft absolutely cannot afford another disaster from a PR point of view, so they need Windows 7 to be an overwhelming success. If Joe Public gets disenfranchised enough with windows to start looking at alternatives, then it's the beginning orf the end for MS, and they'll do everything in their power to keep that from happening.
Removing 32-bit altogether at this stage would be a major speedbump in that process (there's still a lot of hardware that only has 32-bit vista drivers available, and older programs that don't function properly under 64 bit)

More than likely Windows 7 will be last 32-bit release, though. The more time passes, the more peripherals without 64 bit drivers will be out of servers, and the more old software will have been replaced by new programs -- it will become less of an issue in a few years than it would be now.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[bored]

I don't find that surprising, it could be a problem even back in the win2k days. In general back then, running WHQL drivers, the machines generally worked. I had a number of machines with >4G of memory in the 2k time frame and they worked fine as long as you were careful about what hardware you plugged in.

As soon as MS released the 64-bit versions of windows, the PAE support became a 3rd class citizen, primary because the official line was use the 64-bit version of windows.

Running 64-bit isn't a bad idea, and not to sound a little old, but i'm not really sure what your average desktop user does with 6G of ram. Its way more than you need for general use, and things like HD video processing are still fairly constrained until you get over 10+G of RAM. About the only time I go over 4G of RAM is when I have a few virtual machines open. Heck, right (64-bit w2k3) now i've got a win7, suse and sles VM running along with a shed load of local applications and my current physical memory usage is 3G on a machine with 4G of ram. The peak commit on the machine is 5G over a few months. At home I edit HD home movies on a machine with 2G of RAM, and it works just fine except when it becomes disk constrained and then I need a lot more than 6G of ram to cache the whole movie. Frankly, I've thought about putting more RAM in that machine, and I would if every time I think about it I check my current ram usage to find 1G or more free.

Now, the servers I use eat RAM, but that is different...

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[Anonymous Coward]

64-bit is fucking awesome when done right. In many cases you can get more than double the performance vs 32-bit (anything to do with photos, audio, video, etc. decoding, editing, encoding, etc, or sciency shit, or porn simulators.).

"Porn simulators"? WTF is a porn simulator?

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[spyowl]

MS is not in a good position right now to start forcing the issue with the OEMs w/regard to netbooks. They have to tread lightly. Remember, just last year OEMs were perfectly happy with selling Linux netbooks until MS came to their senses and conceded to the XP licensing extension for netbooks only.

Especially considering that all the netbooks that were/are on order or in production right now are slated to be 32-bit only both by the chip manufacturer and OEM (for both hardware and software), it would be hard. I imagine there would be a significant backlash from netbook OEMs if they were forced to upgrade their hardware orders and drivers to 64-bit only. They would opt to either (1) continue with Windows XP, or (2) experiment more w/Linux. Obviously, MS doesn't want either of the above - they want everyone to start using Windows 7. They can't afford to alienate right now - it's not straight shot it once used to be.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[w0mprat]

Windows 2003 32-bit supports more than 4GB of ram (16GB) although the per-process limit remains the same. 2003 is very closely based on XP. It seems microsoft artificially locks 32-bit XP/Vista/7 down to 3.4GB in order to promote 64-bit adoption.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[cbhacking]

Contrary to what a lot of people thought, Vista loads most XP drivers quite happily - but only for the same architecture (of course). WinXP has almost no x64 drivers, meaning that the hardware support issue for Vista would have been *MUCH* worse than it was.

A lot of people still have CPUs incapable of x64. The original Core series and its accompanying Centrino chips, and the mobile Atom chips (that this whole article is based on, in case you hadn't noticed), are major reasons to keep around a 32-bit version for at least one more release (Win7, not Win8).

Why does this bother you so terribly much, anyhow? Are you also of the opinion that OS X 10.5 (comparable in time to Vista) should have dropped x86 (not to mention PPC, which Apple is dropping with the next release)? I really don't understand your vehemence.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[mxh83]

The intel atom cpu is 32 Bit. Shipping no 32 bit whatsoever would eliminate you from this very popular market.

Paul Thurott says Windows 7 will be the last 32-bit Windows although with the popularity of Atom I wonder if this will be true, even if the next Windows release takes another eight years.

He said that about Vista as well. It will not be the last 32 bit OS from MS. No way

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[adolf]

Not really.

My 4-year-old 1.83GHz Pentium M laptop works just peachy with Vista and Windows 7.

It's a 32-bit CPU, though -- 64-bit laptops didn't particularly exist yet at that point in time. There is also no rational upgrade path to get the machine running some manner of x86 CPU.

Yeah, sure -- I'm statistically insignificant because I'm just me. But apparently someone at Microsoft seems to think I'm part of a substantial enough sample set to continue to release 32-bit OS's. So, I guess: Your opinion on the matter didn't count, and won't count until folks like me stop buying 32-bit operating systems.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[morgan_greywolf]

No it isn't. We should all buy new hardware just so we can run Vista?

Fsck that.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[morgan_greywolf]

Not for the 5700, 5701 or 5702.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[ITTechN00b]

We need WIn7 to piss people like you off.... Mainly the reason Win7 is on 32bit because netbooks are able to run Win7. Hell, My Eee PC Seashell 1008HA runs Win7 like a beast with upgraded to 2gb RAM.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[sexconker]

I'm pissed because there already exist working stable OSs for the 32-bit users who absolutely can't go to 64-bit.

Yet we keep catering to these fuckers, so we'll never get the big push for 64-bit software and drivers.

Is there some reason someone on a 32-bit platform NEEDS Windows 7 over Vista or XP?

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[sexconker]

Fuck netbooks.
Worst thing to happen to computing in the last 2 decades.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[sexconker]

Atom is shit.
Atom-based hardware doesn't need to be running Windows 7.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[sexconker]

It wouldn't be that way if MS said "64-bit only" when they started talking about Windows 7.

XP licensing for netbooks only?
WTF is this bullshit. I've heard this FUD for almost a year now. I can STILL go to Dell's site and get XP on a regular desktop.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[sexconker]

PAE is a trash hack, and it's not supported in Windows 7 anyway (as far as I know).
Itanium LOL.

Windows 7 is not a server OS.
No one with half a brain is going to run it on their fucking server. Actually making it impossible for them to do so would be helping them.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[heffrey]

Well, that's your opinion, but if you were in charge of the Windows team would you choose to:

1. Release a 64 bit only OS and condemn yourself to failure in the netbook space, or
2. Release a 32 bit version which can run on Atom and have some chance of competing.

Only an utter moron would opt for option 1. And in case you hadn't noticed, MS owns the netbook market.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[spyowl]

It wouldn't be that way if MS said "64-bit only" when they started talking about Windows 7.

Announced as 64-bit only restriction originally? That would not have been very smart considering they had even less say in the netbook market then, compared to now. Besides, as I already said in my other post, if they had done that, OEMs would be installing XP and Linux on cheap netbooks, not Windows 7, which is definitely not what MS wants, as they reportedly only make $15 per XP license on a netbook and not shoving their new product into the market.

XP licensing for netbooks only?
WTF is this bullshit. I've heard this FUD for almost a year now.

WTF bullshit - because that's when the shit was announced - just over a year ago. WTF - you couldn't find shit in the shittank? Here is your "bullshit" served on the shitplate just for the shitseekers who don't know WTF they are talking about. Shit!

I can STILL go to Dell's site and get XP on a regular desktop.

The XP downgrade program? Yes, you need to buy Vista "BONUS" system, meaning you are paying for a Vista license, then for the license to downgrade to XP on top of that - Dell does all that for you right here. I believe you can also get XP if you have volume licensing program from MS, mostly for large organizations who refused to use Vista. Besides these and netbooks, MS is finished w/selling XP licenses to OEMs.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[sexconker]

Wow someone had a bad day.

You keep spreading the FUD about XP being impossible to get though.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[spyowl]

Wow someone had a bad day.

Not really. Just replied with the same choice words just for fun.

You keep spreading the FUD about XP being impossible to get though.

Hmm... I remember saying XP licensing period was extended for netbooks. Nowhere did I say it was impossible to get. If that's how you took it, that is your problem. Feel free to go back and read again.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[sexconker]

1, and tell Intel to stop gimping their 64-bit chips for no reason. Atom chips are 64-bit, but Intel flips the "lol fuck you" gate at the end.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[sexconker]

"netbooks only"

That was a lie.
XP was extended multiple times in various forms, including support, site licensing, oem licensing / sales, and retail.

XP can be had for any fucking system you can buy.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[spyowl]

That's what happens when you don't/can't read, even if the information is put right in front of your nose.

Re:Windows 7 should be 64 Bit

[sexconker]

Sure does.
Maybe you'll learn to read in the future.

Er?

[snarfies]

"Having netbook manufacturers ship netbooks with 7+ year old Windows XP pre-installed surely deterred some from joining the ranks of households with the small, light and portable netbooks."

Who, exactly? Anyone who doesn't know what they're doing will blindly buy anything. Anyone who DOES know what they're doing will install any OS they like.

Or was the submitted actually suggesting that netbook buyers were actually LOOKING for Vista?

What, you think people *WANT* vista?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista jokes aside, the fact that people are willing TO PAY EXTRA to get their computer with windows XP is a very good indicator.

Most people/companies are not interested in the new features offered by Vista. They just aren't that compelling.

Then add the fact that Vista is new, slower, compatible with less hardware, some of your current software won't work on Vista, and many people find UAC annoying.

Not a lot of upside, and a big downside for many. The value proposition just isn't there.

Microsoft pulled XP from the retail market to avoid Vista looking like a flop.

Re:What, you think people *WANT* vista?

[MozeeToby]

Most people/companies are not interested in the new features offered by Vista. They just aren't that compelling

Most people anyway, have never sat down in front of a Vista machine for long enough to get used to it.

Compatibility, seriously? That hasn't been a problem for literally years. Any computer you buy off the shelf today is going to have compatible hardware and I bet you'd be hard pressed to find individual pieces that are worth buying that aren't compatible.

UAC? Can be turned off in about 5 mouse clicks.

I can't say much about performance except that my $600 laptop has enough power to handle it easily, I know that doesn't capture the netbook market at all, but if you're buying an off the shelf desktop or laptop I highly doubt you'll see any issues. It's true that there isn't a whole lot of big changes to make the transition worthwhile, certainly there's nothing that would make me upgrade an XP machine to Vista.

OTOH, if I were buying a new machine and had the choice, I would, in all honesty, take Vista for the little things if nothing else. Being able to control the volume on a program by program basis is very nice. Being able to search the start bar and individual folders, including things like the control panel is also nice, just to name a couple. The single largest problem with Vista was it's launch, for what it's worth running Vista is actually quite enjoyable for me.

(Please don't blow this post off just because it's not anti-Vista, I run XP at work, Vista on my laptop, and Ubuntu on my Desktop. All have the pluses and minuses, I'm just trying to dispel a bit of the bad reputation that Vista (unfairly IMO) has.)

Re:What, you think people *WANT* vista?

[phantomfive]

I would agree with you, but people would pay sometimes twice as much for Advil as Ibuprofin, despite the fact that they are exactly the same thing. People pay 20% more for 'Amplified Wheybolic Extreme protein' as for 'Wheybolic Extreme protein' at GNC even though from a practical standpoint they provide the same results. People buy bottled water when a purifier will taste just as good (in some cases of course bottled water is slightly more convenient, but not all).

People are willing to pay for something lesser based on things other than measurements of quality. In this case the negative-anti-Microsoft propaganda machine has been working really well, with lawsuits, some hardware problems (which weren't Microsoft's fault really), and people like me who are always happy to spread rumors that weaken Microsoft. I don't know if Vista is really that bad since I haven't used it, but I'm willing to tell anyone who asks about the stories I've heard......

In other words, I don't think your metric is really a valid way to measure the situation. On the other hand, it sure makes me happy.

Re:What, you think people *WANT* vista?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people anyway, have never sat down in front of a Linux machine for long enough to get used to it.

Compatibility, seriously? That hasn't been a problem for literally years. Any computer you buy off the shelf today is going to have compatible hardware and I bet you'd be hard pressed to find individual pieces that are worth buying that aren't compatible.

UAC? Say what?

I can't say much about performance except that my dusty old p4 has enough power to handle it easily, I know that doesn't capture the netbook market at all, but if you're buying an off the shelf desktop or laptop I highly doubt you'll see any issues. It's true that there isn't a whole lot of big changes to make the transition worthwhile, certainly there's nothing that would make me 'upgrade' a Linux machine to Vista.

OTOH, if I were buying a new machine and had the choice, I would, in all honesty, take Linux for the little things if nothing else. Being able to control the volume on a program by program basis is very nice. Are you seriously saying XP can't do this? Being able to search the Kickoff bar, although seriously if you can't find your own way around the couple of dozen of items within the System Settings window just give up on computers, just to name a couple. The single largest problem with Linux was it's lack of a launch, for what it's worth running Linux is actually quite enjoyable for me.

Please don't blow this post off just because it's not pro-Vista. In the unlikely situation where I buy a prebuilt computer that I can't get out of paying for a copy of Vista for, I'll probably throw it in a VM and drag it out when needed.

Re:What, you think people *WANT* vista?

[CannonballHead]

Hmm. P4 running WHAT version of Linux?

It seems like unfair comparisons get made. There are tons of versions of Linux, and tons of versions of specific distros of Linux. There's more or less one version of XP.

Saying your P4 will run "Linux" great is like saying my P4 will run "Windows" great.

If you're talking bout... Ubuntu 9.04 then I doubt the P4 will run it "great." If you're talking DSL or PuppyLinux or something, then yeah, it probably does.

Compatibility is still an issue. Graphics drivers can be a major pain. Is it the fault of the Linux drivers? No, probably not... more the fault of ATI/nVidia ... but I don't think most users really care whose fault it is. They base their decision on how well it works as a whole, not who is at fault.

A lot of the people that don't like Vista for the superficial reasons are the same people that won't like Linux for the superficial reasons.

Re:What, you think people *WANT* vista?

[hyades1]

Re: "Most people anyway, have never sat down in front of a Vista machine for long enough to get used to it."

I don't have to cook and eat a pork chop to figure out that it's rotten. The smell is enough of a clue.

Re:What, you think people *WANT* vista?

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't get Civilization 4 running in Vista after installing the latest patch. In Ubuntu under Wine? Yes, took a little work, but it ran. Vista? Nope. Remember, this was released in 2005.

Re:What, you think people *WANT* vista?

[mgblst]

Being able to control the volume on a program by program basis is very nice. Being able to search the start bar and individual folders, including things like the control panel is also nice, just to name a couple.

I am sure you have other reasons for enjoying Vista, but this is just not worth the change for a lot of people. I used Vista a few times, just for testing. All I wanted to do was change some setting, stuff that is so easy in XP, and they have moved all this shit around in Vista for no good reason. What a load of bullshit.

Nobody gives a shit about the OS, people just want to use there applications, email and browser. The OS should get in the way as little as possible. Vista just changed to much, is bloated, and a real PIA.

Re:What, you think people *WANT* vista?

[MartinSchou]

UAC? Can be turned off in about 5 mouse clicks.

Actually takes 9 mouse clicks, and requires that you know where to look.

1) Click start
2) Click control panel
3+4) Double click User Accounts
5) Click "Turn User Account Control on or off"
6) Click Continue on the UAC dialog
7) Click to remove check mark from UAC
8) Click Okay
9) Click reboot now/later

Re:What, you think people *WANT* vista?

[rohan972]

Most people anyway, have never sat down in front of a Vista machine for long enough to get used to it.

So people don't switch to Vista for the same reason they don't switch to Linux. Interesting.

Re:What, you think people *WANT* vista?

[xtracto]

Most people anyway, have never sat down in front of a Vista machine for long enough to get used to it.

And the problem lies just there. People should not need to "get used to it". That is a decrease in productivity.

Getting used to it means two things: Either, it means "fighting" with it until you /understand/ how things are done in Vista, or you take a "Vista course" so that someone teaches you how to do the things you know how to do with XP.

All have the pluses and minuses, I'm just trying to dispel a bit of the bad reputation that Vista (unfairly IMO) has.)

[un]Fortunately, the only experience I have had with vista is with my father's new Laptop. He bought it a year ago, and since then he has sent me several emails asking how to achieve stuff that in XP was quite straightforward (because he was used to it). Also, every time we speak in Skype he always tells me how much he hates Vista. The problem is that, because I am not near, I can not install XP over Vista.

Re:What, you think people *WANT* vista?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista changed too much in the way of OS functionality, yet people want to disregard the OS and only use applications/internet? In what tortured view of logic does it follow from this that people don't want Vista because they changed things they don't use?

Netbook vs. Notebook

[camcorder]

Intel describes a netbook as a platform for playing media and a notebook as a platfrom for creating media. So what Windows 7 is aimed for? Play or create media? If you put both for a netbook, you just waste lots of cpu power for bloat you add in order to create new media.

One of the biggest strenghts of Open Source is to give opportunity to tailor systems for a specific needs. That's why Moblin or Plasma mid and couple of other products aimed to play media only and not bother creating any will succeed in netbook market sooner or later.

Microsoft has a platform gifted with applications aimed for creating media, and that's why it's still dominant and biggest player in desktop/notebook market. But netbooks need none of these applications so their OS.

Re:Netbook vs. Notebook

[the_humeister]

Intel describes a netbook as a platform for playing media and a notebook as a platfrom for creating media. So what Windows 7 is aimed for? Play or create media? If you put both for a netbook, you just waste lots of cpu power for bloat you add in order to create new media.

It's marketing drivel. Don't give it anymore consideration than that. I use my Acer Aspire One to do video encoding, and I don't give a damn what the marketing people say.

Re:Netbook vs. Notebook

[Nicolay77]

So, where do you upload your torrents ?

Windows $NEXT_VERSION to rule them all

[David Gerard]

Windows 7 betas have been greeted with remarkable positive press. "Of course," said Steve Ballmer, "the betas preview the 'champagne and hookers' edition, which would be way too much for netbooks and explode users' brains. Imagine thinking those little things are computers! So we're releasing what we call Windows 7 Dumbass Edition(tm). It lets you log in and look at the shiny. Even Spider Solitaire has the ribbon toolbar! And you can buy an upgrade to the version that runs programs! It lets you do that!"

Dumbass Edition(tm) comes with pre-installed viruses to make the computer part of the Storm, Conficker and FBI botnets. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

"Some manufacturers were going to release netbooks with ARM processors, which would run Linux or Chrome OS at twice the speed, half the heat and ten-hour battery life, but wouldn't run Windows 7. Microsoft assures us this is a crushing blow for ARM," said Michael Silver of Gartner. "ARM didn't have anything to say to that, just a guffawing sound down the phone. Obviously they're upset and hysterical."

In future news, Microsoft Corporation has announced a limited one-off extension of availability of its Windows XP operating system to April 2101 after criticism from large customers and analysts. This is the fifty-sixth extension of XPâ(TM)s availability since 2008. "Windows XP is currently in the extremely very prolonged super-extended support phase and Microsoft encourages customers to migrate to Windows for Neurons 2097 as soon as feasible," said William Gates V, CEO and great-grandson of the company founder. "Spare change?"

Illustration: Steve Ballmer's joyous expression when announcing seeing the latest Microsoft quarterly figures.

Re:Windows $NEXT_VERSION to rule them all

[Anonymous Coward]

Roy Schestowitz wants to know when you're throwing your next lemon party.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Legit Reviews?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much more spam can slashdot get? This is ridiculous.

Linux on netbooks

[Anonymous Coward]

Performance of embedded intel VGA chips is horribly broken in the latest ubuntu remix. It won't likely be fixed for a while.

Can't plug in a sim card to use the built in 3G radio.

Bluetooth support is minimal. Would be nice to tether to my smart phone (since I cant surf directly), but no.

Though all in all I like ubuntu's netbook launcher, and overall it's much less cumbersome than trying to use XP. I will try out windows 7, however, because I'm impressed with what I've seen of it on the desktop so far.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Really?

[TheNetAvenger]

Ok, the article isn't off the scale in terms of inaccuracy, but when you see comments like this, how can you trust anything they do or say?

Aero is automatically disabled when unplugged in battery saver mode which makes sense

Aero is NOT disabled when unplugged; instead, translucency is turned off. (The Blur/Glass effect)

Aero itself remains enabled. I know people confuse 'Glass' and 'Aero' and 'DWM' and what the OS, but come on this is a technical review right, shouldn't they get the basic facts that you find on Wikipedia correct or at least maybe, just maybe have a clue themselves?

There are other more subtle errors in the article, and even though it basically says Win7 is doing fine. However, do you notice it forgets to mention that Win7 is performing as well as XP while having search, defender and many other 'heavy' features working properly and still performing as well as XP on a very modest CPU and GPU platform.

Going to leave it here...

Re:Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Article?

Re:Really?

[cbhacking]

However, do you notice it forgets to mention that Win7 is performing as well as XP while having search, defender and many other 'heavy' features working properly and still performing as well as XP on a very modest CPU and GPU platform.

This is the critical bit. There's a LOT of features that Win7 (and sometimes Vista) has that XP lacks, and some of them (the instant search being a major one for me) are sufficiently useful that I hate using XP on the simple basis that it lacks them. However, more features typically means more performance demands, which netbooks obviously have trouble meeting (you *can* run Vista on a netbook, but I don't recommend it). The fact that Win7 gives you the new features while running smoothly on netbooks is a pretty big deal.

Runing windows 7 on my netbook here

[Anonymous Coward]

The other day I installed windows 7 on my asus eee 900ha. Previously, I had been running a very stripped down version of xp, which I was quite satisfied with.
After installing windows 7, I'm very pleased with it. Even with a default install, it was performing quite nicely, and was booting as fast as xp did. Its quite fast and snappy, only a slight bit less so than xp was. It tends to use a lot of cpu when doing simple tasks like moving the mouse around the screen, but for the most part that's not a big deal for me. 7 has a lot of neat features that weren't present in xp, so all in all I'm quite happy that I decided to try it.

Re:Runing windows 7 on my netbook here

[cboslin]

It tends to use a lot of cpu when doing simple tasks like moving the mouse around the screen,

Sorry that is a fail. Obviously Windows 7 does NOT run effectively on that size processor with that amount of RAM.

I see the Netbook in that review...

[Mex]

... is probably the same one running their web-server. Holy Slashdotting, batman!

My Anecdotal Evidence

[basementman]

Having run Windows XP, Ubuntu and Windows 7 on my MSI Wind U100 I can say Windows Seven has by far been the best OS. XP ran fine, but it wasn't particularly pleasing to the eye and had some issues running multiple programs at once. Ubuntu looked marginally better but performance wise it was terrible, I couldn't watch a flash video without it seizing up. Windows Seven looks pretty, runs faster than XP and is just better overall.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[gravos]

That's Adobe's problem, not Ubuntu's. Videos in every player other than Flash will work fine.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[noonanful]

I've had almost the exact same experience on my Dell mini 9, tried XP, ubuntu, Xubuntu, OSX and a host of other lightweight linux distros and still found Win7 to be easily the best.

As far as I can tell it runs just as fast as any of the lightweight linux installs i put on it, and in many cases better, while still looking better.

My 2 cents

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[s7uar7]

It might not be Ubuntu's fault, but it's Ubuntu's problem.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[PRMan]

Actually, many open-source drivers do not have hardware support for playing video on the graphics chip.

Regardless of the reason for this (and it may be impossible to fix if they are closed up), Ubuntu is very poor at playing Flash video depending on the chip. On one machine at home, they emulate hardware speedup in the driver using software, but Flash actually does better with it turned off.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

That's Adobe's problem, not Ubuntu's. Videos in every player other than Flash will work fine.

I agree, except that in part it is Ubuntu's problem as well - considering that Ubuntu is portrayed as the first step to migration from Windows (I switched with Ubuntu, but I was patient enough to jump through hoops - for my PC configuration - to get it and sound to work. For some others, it worked right out of the box)

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[RockClimbingFool]

That's Adobe's problem, not Ubuntu's. Videos in every player other than Flash will work fine.

And that is what is wrong with Linux.

Last time I checked, if you want to surf the web and watch videos, most of those videos are going to be in Flash format (Youtube, etc.).

So why would I want to run Ubuntu on a netbook when you can't watch videos on arguably the most popular website for online videos?

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had almost the exact same experience on my Dell mini 9, tried XP, ubuntu, Xubuntu, OSX and a host of other lightweight linux distros and still found Win7 to be easily the best.

Calling OSX a "lightweight OS" on the Mini 9? I smell troll.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[Benanov]

No, it's definitely Adobe's problem. Flash is terrible; everyone I know is just too dumb to try living without it.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[QuantumRiff]

But to the users, its not Adobe's problem. Adobe works fine on their windows machine, so it must be Linux's fault that they can't watch their favorite video's on Hulu.

Its a nasty double edged sword, since Adobe won't care till it hits a critical mass of users, and it won't hit a critical mass, if its crap. The only decent solution is an Open Source project http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/ , so that others, who do care, can fix it, but while its coming along nicely, last I checked, wasn't quite as good as the cruddy Adobe one. (but I do need to check again)

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[potHead42]

Actually it's your problem with Ubuntu ;-)

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[CannonballHead]

But it is a valid reason to say that Ubuntu didn't run as well during normal operations.

I have the Flash issue even on a dual core laptop running Ubuntu 9.04. It's annoying. Every time I mention it, though, the same answer comes up: it's a problem with flash, not Ubuntu. That may be true, but it's still making it much more annoying and difficult to watch Flash videos, no matter whose fault it is. Average User (tm) is not going to say "Oh well. I can live without being able to watch youtube videos easily. After all, I'm supporting Free Software." They're going to say, "This stinks. Windows worked, Linux just isn't as good. I'm going back."

Many analogies come to mind but I'll spare everyone from reading them ;) hehe.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[citylivin]

"Flash is terrible; everyone I know is just too dumb to try living without it."

So whats the alternative to flash that you would recommend?

Flash is a hassle and a half, but for a quick web video I am not sure what would do the job better. Real player and WMV are even worse than flash, and similarly uncompatable.

What would you have youtube run on? Or maybe your post was just to say there was no value in sites like youtube? If so, you will simply be left behind. Video is the new mp3. It might as well be 1998 and have you pushing VQF instead of mp3s. Not gonna happen. This isnt like facebook which is completely useless. Pretty much everyone watches some online videos.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[boast]

Well, there was that article from a few days ago: HTML 5 As a Viable Alternative To Flash?

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[Rockoon]

You are right, its not Ubuntu's problem.

Its the Ubuntu end-users problem, and its in-their-face, while they won't have this problem with XP or 7.

Part of the problem is the hatred of the proprietary, which is a huge deterant for the hardware and software support they actualy need (from video chip makers and adobe) which would allow them to grow up and be an "OS for real people."

Maybe someday. Not today. Sorry.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[harlows_monkeys]

Having run Windows XP, Ubuntu and Windows 7 on my MSI Wind U100 I can say Windows Seven has by far been the best OS

Have you considered giving OS X a try? Instructions for installing it are readily available on the web, and it would be interesting to see how it stacks up to the others.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[Airborne-ng]

I've had almost the exact same experience on my Dell mini 9, tried XP, ubuntu, Xubuntu, OSX and a host of other lightweight linux distros and still found Win7 to be easily the best.

Calling OSX a "lightweight OS" on the Mini 9? I smell troll.

Never seen OS X on a Mini 9? (http://tinyurl.com/c8j597) Or are you just misinterpreting the author and assuming that every OS mentioned was a "lightweight OS"?

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[recoiledsnake]

It's Linux's problem too. http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2007/05/welcome_to_the_jungle.html

Also, if the video drivers do not support acceleration, what do you expect Adobe to do? Develop graphic drivers and install them with flash?

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[Kjella]

If you're someone using Ubuntu to watch youtube or trying to make someone else who'd like to watch youtube use Ubuntu, then it's your problem. I guess it's no problem for the guy developing Ubuntu and going home to surf on his Mac or Windows machine, but for everyone else it is.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

play the flash video in VLC and then it will be fast
bottom line: adobe does a poor job.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an Adobe issue. Their Linux version of flash is fail, period.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[Hel Toupee]

None of the open-source drivers, either from the manufacturer or 3rd party support hardware video decoding, however, closed-source Linux drivers for the big 3 GPU manufacturers (intel, nvidia, and AMD) all contain the necessary code to accelerate video playback, if the hardware supports it. Of these, nvidia's support in the playback applications (VLC, mplayer, etc.) is the most mature and robust. Intel is not far behind. AMD, to my knowledge, is not currently supported, even though the features are available in the drivers, the libraries to hook into the drivers are not available yet. I researched this when building a Linux-based HTPC. Went with a GeForce 8200-based board. Full support for MPEG, H.264, etc. decoding in hardware using Mplayer, VLC, and XBMC video player.

Linux versions of Flash are, IMHO, horrible. Ubuntu ships with an open-source alternative which is worse.

Windows is the best choice if you want it to just work. Most people that complain, shout, and scream about how terrible Linux is, and how they're switching back to Windows expected Linux to 'just work'. Linux is fine if you can put in a little time to get things to work that the distro wasn't specifically designed to do.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not actually true - the open source drivers (and also ATI's closed source drivers) have support for hardware acceleration. The problem is that Adobe's method of detecting hardware acceleration only detects the Nvidia driver. All other drivers are assumed to be unaccelerated.

http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2008/05/flash_uses_the_gpu.html

(read the comments from users where they discuss how "hey, I've got a Radeon and the method of detection you're using says I'm not accelerated!")

Hopefully this will change in a future version now that they're aware of the problem, but even so, WTF. Didn't they test that shit on anything other than Nvidia??

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anyone else getting tired of how these fucking morons systematically get modded up?

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the problem is the hatred of the proprietary, which is a huge deterant for the hardware and software support they actualy need (from video chip makers and adobe) which would allow them to grow up and be an "OS for real people."

Have I got this straight: Adobe is shipping a crappy proprietary flash implementation because the "hatred of the proprietary" deters them from fixing it, not because they think Linux is marginal and not worth spending more time on. So, supposing we really loved proprietary software, Adobe would magically ship better implementations because of... what, karma? It's not as if flash isn't installed on practically every single Linux desktop out there, so they're not going to see a bigger installed base by eliminating this "hatred".

Also, the notion that "real people" would have youtube and browser games as primary concerns is bollocks. "Real people" use Linux and other UNIXen all the time, including for "real work".

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[ion.simon.c]

Yes, audio is a bit of a mess. Target OSS and your job is done.

What video drivers don't provide acceleration of any sort? Every video driver that I've run into in the past couple of years supports either Xv or OGL or both.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[ion.simon.c]

Actually, many open-source drivers do not have hardware support for playing video on the graphics chip.

a) Which ones don't? And why does it matter?
b) Why doesn't Xv cut the mustard?

Note that I can play a MPEG4 HD video on R420 hardware with version 6.9.0 of xf86-video-ati in Mplayer. (With an Athlon XP 2800 CPU.) I would be willing to bet that I could do the same with an R200 on that system.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[Blakey Rat]

Yada yada, it's never Ubuntu's fault. But it's still their problem. Either fix it, or cope with the fact that people don't care about "fault" when they encounter a problem with their computer, and they'll switch.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know which one of your gaping holes you people pull this shit from. Probably the one Ballmer just pulled his dick out of but, on my Aspire One netbook, full screen flash runs perfectly in full screen.

So, suck it, shill.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[Rockoon]

Have I got this straight: Adobe is shipping a crappy proprietary flash implementation because the "hatred of the proprietary" deters them from fixing it, not because they think Linux is marginal and not worth spending more time on.

No, you don't have it straight.

For a start, Adobe's implementation is crappy and proprietary under ALL operating systems. Its quite a bit worse under Linux because you folks cannot even agree on anything simple, like a standard audio subsystem (its also important not to break it once you've agreed, which is something I think is likely considering the track record of audio subsystems in general on Linux)

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[noonanful]

Bad grammar not a troll, OSX can be put on a mini9 but it's a bit of work it does however run faster than you'd think, not lightweight though.

Re:My Anecdotal Evidence

[w0mprat]

The problem being the hatred of the proprietary is holding back adoption of the free. Ironically this plays into the hands of the proprietary universe.

Strange conclusions?

[William Ager]

So, in my interpretation, the Windows 7 netbook had slightly shorter battery life, and performed slightly worse in all but two benchmarks. One of those two was dealing with "next generation gaming performance" that really isn't point of netbooks, and the other was essentially identical to the XP performance.

And the conclusion the reviewers take from this is that Windows 7 is good? Just because it isn't as bad as Vista, and isn't too much worse than XP?

With these sorts of results, XP is going to be with us for a long time. Why is it so hard for Microsoft to make something comparable?

Re:Strange conclusions?

[avandesande]

You would have a hard time convincing me that security can be implemented at no CPU cost and running IE in a sandbox has huge advantages.
So what's not to like?

Re:Strange conclusions?

[CannonballHead]

Yes, that's good, isn't it? A 7 year old OS vs. a not-yet-released OS running on current hardware... and the not-yet-released OS performs almost just as well as the 7 year old OS?

I'd say that's pretty good. Typical idea is that older OS's will run faster since they were smaller and HAD to run on .. less hardware. Hardware is better, so OS's can plan on using more of it. An OS that is able to run almost as well as a 7 year old OS on CURRENT hardware is doing pretty well.

Re:Strange conclusions?

[rm999]

What about features?

Re:Strange conclusions?

[Nightspirit]

Or, to put things in perspective, windows 7 adds additional features and security with minimal overhead. The performance differences were what, ~5% compared to a nearly 10 year old OS? I'm sure windows 98 is faster than windows 7, and if that sounds like a ridiculous comparison, I find it ridiculous that people would actually prefer to use XP over 7.

Re:Strange conclusions?

[Krneki]

I'm an XP advocate, but the performance of Win7 is almost there. Considering all the new stuff Win7 brings, it's a fair trade.

P.S: I'm still laughing at Vista.

Re:Strange conclusions?

[master811]

Bare in mind that netbook hardware is most certainly anything but current. Performance is roughly equivalent to a 5 year old Pentium M. The only difference is that it has been shrunk and power consumption reduced to the point where 5 year old mid class laptop has been reduced significantly in size.
 
Running Win 7 on a modern mobile (Core 2 Duo) CPU would give a much better comparison, and really show the true benefits it has.

Re:Strange conclusions?

[Vexorian]

. An OS that is able to run almost as well as a 7 year old OS on CURRENT hardware is doing pretty well.

Such a revolutionary idea... Except that other netbook OSes have been doing that for ages? Even XP is too slow for my netbook, and not as fast as 9.04 on THIS old computer. So I guess windows 7 is a no-no for me.

Re:Strange conclusions?

[CannonballHead]

that netbook hardware is most certainly anything but current.

True. The specs, at any rate. But netbook hardware is probably better than typical hardware from 7 years ago, isn't it? If I remember correctly, 7 years ago was back in awful celeron days...

Re:Strange conclusions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just one thing that might tip the balance on that argument: the 7 year old OS is cheaper than the new shiny Windows 7

Re:Strange conclusions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical idea is that older OS's will run faster since they were smaller and HAD to run on .. less hardware.

By OS, you mean Windows here, I think. OS X and Linux consistently get faster with each release.

Re:Strange conclusions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck me - your post demonstrates how entrenched this microsoft "downgrade" cycle has become: Everyone expects the next release to be slower and buggier... Humans are supposed to innovate, and make things better over time.. not worse!

Windows 7, IMHO, *is* better than Vista and XP... But please tell me that you think things *should* get better over time, not worse?

I still think it's ironic that if I want to boot my PC, type up a letter, then print it out, I'm still looking at the same working time as in 1992... a 386 PC with wordperfect would do the same job as a Core duo in OO. The only "progress" is that I can play a mp3 at the same time and have a chat with someone in Australia... Progress, but not quite as expected.

Re:Strange conclusions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical idea is that older OS's will run faster since they were smaller and HAD to run on .. less hardware.

If older OSs run faster, and do the same stuff - what the hell have OS writers been doing for the last 7 years?

Re:Strange conclusions?

[Blue Shifted]

98 was faster than xp.

xp was faster than vista. a lot.

used to think xp was bloated, 'till vista came out.

took vista to make xp look good.

gawd, i hated being on the frontlines of customer support when vista came out.

ms could and should have supported and developed 98. if ms could have worked in better flash drive support, added large file support (over 4GB files), and other small things in a service pack or two, it would still make a great home OS.

Re:Strange conclusions?

[jambarama]

A few months ago I found an old computer, which wasn't attached to our network, running pre-SP XP with 256mb RAM. I found it was much faster than its counterparts running XP SP3, even though they had double the memory and much faster processors.

The point of that story is to say that the system requirements have grown for XP over the years along with the hardware. In 2001 you could run XP on 128mb ram. You just can't do that with XP SP3.

I know the increased demand is generally because of security patches and other goodness, but calling XP an 8-year-old OS isn't really fair - either from performance point of view or for calling it obsolete.

Re:Strange conclusions?

[Anonymous Coward]

How, exactly, do you expect the computer to automate your letter-typing?

In any case the printer should be significantly faster.

Re:Strange conclusions?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like a true botnet maintainer.

why use old RC

[jupiterssj4]

Should have used the RTM that came out... the RC is months old... lots of stuff has changed

Re:why use old RC

[lukas84]

They probably don't have access to the RTM yet. Like most law-abiding citizens ;)

Mister LinOx

[Mister LinOx]

Well, Google OS will be aimed at netbooks and it will be based around the Linux Kernel.

Chrome OS announcement timing.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

It is a game invented by Microsoft. Some start up creates a product. Looks like the product has some legs. Microsoft feels, that product could threaten its monopoly or it feels it wants that piece of the market also for itself, or it thinks sabotaging that product would somehow strengthen its position. All it used to take to kill it would be a press release. "Microsoft is planning to release a competitor in the next release Or would make the functionality part of Windows." That is it. Venture capital would evaporate and the product would never see the light of the day.

Now Microsoft is facing the same game from the other end. Very carefully timed announcement by Google that all the OS you would need to run a netbook is coming soon. Vendors do not commit wholeheartedly to Microsoft. Device driver writers do not just hack something that will work in Windows alone and be done with it. Consumers also do not rush out to buy the latest and greatest. Corporations add another action to their evaluation. "What about Chrome OS?". That buys some time. Most vendors cite Chrome OS and demand hefty discount for Win7 in netbook market. Microsoft is forced to sell its OS at bargain basement prices in the fastest growing segment of PC market.

Re:Chrome OS announcement timing.

[recoiledsnake]

1. Microsoft is no startup
2. Google has yet to prove their mettle in OSes.
3. Android is 'meh' compared to iPhone as of now
4. OS development and refining takes a loooooong time(even if Google uses Linux as a base). Windows 1.0 came out in 1985. Linus posted first code for Linux back in 1991(which had it's design roots in Unix)
5. You think many consumers will wait for Chrome OS till after the middle next year when they want to buy a $300 netbook now?
6. If vendors don't ship netbooks now and instead wait, other vendors will eat their lunch
7. Same as #6 with device driver writers

MS might be pressured to reduce prices sooner or later though.

Re:Chrome OS announcement timing.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

MS might be pressured to reduce prices sooner or later though.

That is the key. As long as Microsoft is maintaining the huge margins in Office and OS franchises and keeps running the upgrade treadmill at full speed, it will generate so much cash, it can simply wait out any competition. On the other hand it has grown to be a huge bureaucracy with many fifedoms and personal empires built inside. So throttling the cash generation even by small amount would play havoc in the internal palace intrigues within the company.

Using vaporware to create congestion in the cash flow of the "enemy" is quintessentially a Microsoft tactic. Just the game is played by the other party now. That the difference.

Footprint?

[argent]

Let's see... a bunch of hardware benchmarks, which would be expected to result in negligible difference between different versions of Windows. Does Vista REALLY come out significantly worse than XP on these kinds of benchmarks?

How about something relevant to netbooks? What's the memory footprint? Disk footprint?

Re:Footprint?

[abigsmurf]

Memory footprint is a misleading metric. Unused ram is wasted ram. I/O speed and other memory benchmarks are far more useful.

Re:Footprint?

[argent]

Memory footprint is a misleading metric. Unused ram is wasted ram.

I'm not talking about cache and other tricks to use free memory for your benefit, I'm talking about how much RAM you need to get decent performance out of the OS. Netbooks tend to be minimally equipped with everything, including RAM, so if you need 1GB to get decent performance out of Vista/7 and 360M to get decent performance out of XP (numbers generated by proctonautics), you're probably going to be happier with XP than Vista/7 on a 1GB netbook, or even a 2GB one.

I speak from experience.

Re:Footprint?

[xtracto]

Memory footprint is a misleading metric. Unused ram is wasted ram. I/O speed and other memory benchmarks are far more useful.

Nope, RAM used bye THE OPERATING SYSTEM "main" (for wide definition of main, like antivirus, antimalware, netbios, etc) processes is wasted ram.

If you need 1GB JUST to run your operating system, then it is a resource hog. Of course, if the memory metric used is how much "Physical memory" is free after running OpenOffice+Firefox+Gimp, then THAT is a misleading and stupid metric.

VirtualBox

[loudmax]

VirtualBox is very easy to use and it's GPL. If you use the free-as-in-beer desktop integration tools, then it's quite slick as well. I run a 64-bit Gentoo desktop with 32-bit Windows XP as a guest OS. This gives me all the power of Unix with MS compatibility when I need it. In full screen mode, I might as well be running XP for all you can tell.

I haven't tried 3D accelerated graphics. I understand that VirtualBox has been making strides in bringing OpenGL to the guest host, but they don't have any expectation of getting DirectX working any time soon if ever.

I hope Oracle decides to keep VirtualBox alive. As it is, VirtualBox is great for desktops, but the server side tools aren't in the same league as VMware. With Oracle backing, VirtualBox could become a serious contender.

Re:VirtualBox

[krelian]

Without Direct X support you cannot play any games on a windows VM (perhaps OpenGL based games but I haven't tried any and it's not like they are abundant anyway). You also can't use any of the fancy Aero effects in Vista and 7.

Re:VirtualBox

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out VirtualBox 3 (virtualbox.org). The free-as-in-beer version now includes experimental Direct-3D support for Windows guests.

Re:VirtualBox

[snadrus]

Virtualbox got DirectX guests on Linux Hosts recently (3.0?). It was a slashdot article too.

What a Joke!

[Nom du Keyboard]

Microsoft has addressed most of the pitfalls of Windows Vista on a netbook by increasing battery life and performance to be very close to that of the lighter-weight Windows XP.

What a fracking joke! That the new product is almost as good as the 7 year old one that it replaces.

Re:What a Joke!

[Anonymous Coward]

... while maintaining all the features of a modern OS? Seriously, finish reading the article before bitching.

Re:What a Joke!

[asg1]

They add more features, increase security, and increase code size yet you somehow think that it will use less CPU? The fact that they optimized it enough to come that close to XP is impressive.

Re:What a Joke!

[Krneki]

It is always like this, older OS always perform better on older hardware.

It's the same with Linux. If you want to use a PII (for example) you won't install a new distro.

Re:What a Joke!

[JustNiz]

I don't agree that there is any necessary correlation between code size and CPU usage.

Nor do I see more code on its own being a good thing. In fact without bringing extra benefit its very bad IMHO.
Vista is about 10 times bigger than XP but doesnt seem t odo much more.

With regard to more features: Vista's usability is terrible and way less productive compared to XP.

Vista's copy progress dialog doesn't even tell you the name of the file you're copying any more. It only tells you part of the path it comes from. XP gives you the filename and full path.

If you move a folder containing files to a different place that already has a folder with the same name, XP merges them properly. Even with UAC turned off, Vista comes up with a supremely annoying dialog to confirm each file in turn, and even after a succesful move, the source folder is left behind.

If there's even one file in a folder that Vista thinks might be a media file, it presents the file list of the whole folder with media attributes instead of 'all files' attributes by default. You can't turn off this annoying 'feature'.

Vista's DRM means it can't play some of my media that XP can play without problem.

Re:What a Joke!

[Smurf]

Oh, come on! Windows 7 is still an improvement! It can only be a huge improvement (over Vista).

Re:What a Joke!

[recoiledsnake]

Because they essentially have no competition.

MS isn't improving the performance or security of their operating system.
Instead, they are simply cramming more products in and calling the monstrosity an "operating system" - in an effort to expand into more markets.

Huh? MS just fixed and tweaked what was wrong with Vista without promising or adding a bajillion new features. Security is a lot better, with many exploits for XP that are coming out not working on Vista or 7.

Intel and AMD have been making dual-core CPUs for more than FOUR YEARS.
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20050418comp.htm

Intel has announced 8-core CPUs.
And yet the "new" (its basically a rebranded Vista) Windows 7 will barely take advantage of any of them other than the first..
http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1612

Why link to outdated speculation? Check these real tests and benchmarks out instead. http://www.infoworld.com/t/platforms/generation-gap-windows-multicore-273

Even Slashdot linked to it. http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F01%2F22%2F1554224&from=rss

This is what happens when you don't have any competition. Its not an operating system, its a bloated behemoth born of a monopoly that wants to kill competition in every software market it can.

Microsoft should have been split up in 2000.
You can't create competition through regulation.

Err, you want MS to be split up because of regulation and then say you can't create competition through regulation. Cognitive dissonance?

Are you sure you didn't mean to post this comment when Vista launched? If not, all I can say is this --> http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/07/25/1757253/Linus-Calls-MicrosoftHatred-a-Disease

If your sole objective was to irrationally hate on Microsoft and gather Slashdot karma, Congratulations, you've been modded up already.

Re:What a Joke!

[benjymouse]

MS isn't improving the performance or security of their operating system.

Huh? Windows Vista introduced some really low level:

• Memory and IO priory - which made background tasks less interfering as they could gradually cause higher memory priorities to be swapped even if you left the machine idle for a long time
• Granular scheduler - more precise scheduling
• Multimedia-aware scheduling - network bandwidth reserved when playing back multimedia and cpu and memory reserved to avoid glitches. Vista (and 7) holds up remarkbly well under stress - much more than Xp or Linux.

It is widely recognized (at least among security researchers such as Charlie Miller) that Vista has improved security a great deal:

• Stack/heap encryption and checksumming
• DEP
• Variable reordering (making buffer overflows much less likely to affect critical parts with pointers)
• Many other anti-memory-corruption prevention mechanisms
• Process integrity levels and the IE sandbox - effectively a subdivision of the current user account by modifying the process security token (dropping rights) and preventing shatter attacks.
• Service hardening - even before Vista/Server 2008 only a few services (daemons) were actually running as the "root" (SYSTEM) account. But with Vista/2008 service hardening again modifies the process security token to effectively shut it out from any resources except those explicitly granted. This is like Apparmor, only it leverages the built-in granular permission structure instead of requiring external "profiles". In other words, it is like each service has it's own account and has severely restricted access - even if formally running as SYSTEM or NETWORK SERVICE.
• Network Access Protection - can (almost) guarantee that clients on a network which do not meet certain policy requirements (e.g. patch levels, AV protection etc.) are quarantined and only allowed e.g. windowsupdate access.

Windows 7 also has some kernel tweaks which further improves performance and scalability

• Microsoft engineers solved the "spinlock" problem (akin to the "big kernel lock" problem Linux still grabbles with) and improved performance and scalability to 256 cores.
• Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (to be backported IIRC) which is a highly granular, minimal-overhead user mode threading model. Programs written to take advantage of these features will have greatly improved scalability across many-cores (the current process/thread concept for concurrency is really coarse-grained in comparison).
• Transactional memory (at least they are experimenting with it in '7).
• New "delayed" service mode
• Multicore tweaking - switch off entire cores when usage so permits to save energy.
• Lots of other minor tweaks - such as consolidating timer events so that if processes asks for timer events every 10 seconds they are synchronized so that they all receive their event at the same time and the CPU can go into a lower energy state in between.

Intel and AMD have been making dual-core CPUs for more than FOUR YEARS.

What your point? All major operating systems have supported multiple cores FOR YEARS. Even XP had support for 2-4 cores IIRC. The article you linked to was not an announcement that Windows now can use multiple cores, it was an announcement of the new tweaks (removal of spinlock and 256 core scalability) and of the new Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (a.k.a. "concert") - which is user mode threading and is in addition to the traditional kernel mode threading with processes and threads.

Re:What a Joke!

[recoiledsnake]

Well, the law that MS was prosecuted under is generally known as 'anti-trust regulation'. Google(or Bing?!) that if you if wish to see what I am talking about.

My other points still stand though.

Fast-forward about 10 years, and we get "Windows 7" - a 20GB "operating system" that requires a 128MB video card, with handwriting recognition, media center, Aero etc. etc. etc.

If you RTFA you will understand that the whole point of this Slashdot article that we are supposed to be commenting about is that 'Windows 7 runs well on netbooks'(even with aero enabled). In case you didn't know, netbooks contain the most smallest, cheapest and slowest hardware available for sale in the market, which are slower than mainstream desktops sold 3 years ago.

So, including 'handwriting recognition, media center, Aero etc. etc. etc. ' doesn't hurt the people who don't need them and immensely helps people who need them.

Now, before you continue slamming the 20gb OS(more like 10GB install size for the x64 version), you might want to read this --> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html

Please, don't hold us the rest of us back just because you want to run the latest OS on your 486.

Re:What a Joke!

[recoiledsnake]

LOL. Irrational hating?

The Infoworld article that you cited said this about Windows 7:

But for the rest of us (that is, veteran Windows users who can see through the hype), Windows 7 is really just Windows Vista with some performance tweaks and an updated Explorer shell. It's a modest update that may or may not swing the public-perception pendulum back in Microsoft's favor.

It should come as no surprise that Windows 7 performs very much like its predecessor. In fact, during extensive multiprocess benchmark testing, Windows 7 essentially mirrored Vista in almost every scenario. Database tasks? Roughly 118 percent slower than XP on dual-core (Vista was 92 percent slower) and 19 percent slower than XP on quad-core (identical to Vista). Workflow? A respectable 38 percent slower than XP on dual-core (Vista was 98 percent slower) and 59 percent slower on quad-core (Vista was 66 percent slower).

Even on a quad-core CPU, its 19 percent ***SLOWER*** than XP. At DATABASE tasks - tasks that require litte or no graphics (and presumably aren't using Aero)..

You can only say it "takes advantage" of multiple cores because it gets *less slower than XP* as you add more CPU cores. THIS IS NOT PROGRESS.

Hating? Yes.
Irrational? Hardly.

Perhaps you missed this part(remember that your original gripe was that Windows 7 doesn't scale well with Intel's coming 8 and 16 and a kajillion no. of cores)

But it's not all bad news with Windows 7. Microsoft's new OS has a clear multicore scalability advantage over both Windows XP and Windows Vista, especially on less I/O-bound tasks like our multiprocess database workload. (We can thank SQL Server 2008 for that one.) In fact, with its second-generation multicore tweaking (good-bye, global lock!), Windows 7 is poised to overtake XP even earlier than Windows Vista -- perhaps at 16 or 24 cores.

And progress is not just measured in raw speed. Or else we would all be running DOS and Minix.

Re:What a Joke!

[AnyoneEB]

Bad idea. If you run Linux on a Pentium II, then you should run a recent lightweight distro like Puppy Linux. Linux 2.6 has a lot of interesting recent performance improvements including the new scheduler.

On the other hand, choosing the current most popular Linux distro is likely to get you a similar slowdown over time as more is considered standard. For example, Ubuntu runs various system tasks like checking for updates in the background by default which will be completely unnoticeable on a recent machine but would make a Pentium II crawl. On the other hand, I believe each release of Ubuntu is usually reported as being faster than the last like each release of OS X is reported as being faster than the last. Successive releases of the OS being slower seems to be a Windows-specific meme -- and I am not even sure how true it is because the obvious slowdowns like visual effects can be disabled.

Re:What a Joke!

[Krneki]

Of course you will always have specific Linux version for slower hardware. After all I'm using Linux on my PI 200 router.

And no, Ubuntu is not getting any faster. But if it can keep the speed it will be more responsive with newer PC.

Re:What a Joke!

[recoiledsnake]

And the ZDNET blog you referenced had completely substantiated speculation? Just read it again once.

Re:What a Joke!

[recoiledsnake]

We would probably be seeing a much more streamlined and pure "operating system",

While this is a ideal goal, it's never a good idea in practice. It's like selling a car engine to customers and expecting them to shop for seats etc. Consumers expect a minimum level of functionality from a OS they purchase.

If you're going to gloat about law school, let me tell you that I have a Masters in Computer Science, I have messed with the internals of Linux, written a kernel driver for Linux that mounts .tar files as a read only directory and I know how OSes work and integrate with other software.

What you want is Slackware, or Linux From Scratch. Go get it instead of trying to ram such a thing down all our collective throats. (PS I ran gentoo for a year when I had a lot of free time and didn't end up too happy with it at the end).

Re:Big achievement??

[pushing-robot]

Do you honestly think that a stock install of Ubuntu 9.04 uses fewer CPU cycles than, say, Debian Woody? Hell, grab some floppies and fire up that old 286; with all the improvements to Linux over the years, new distros must run circles around the old ones we had back then!

Software becomes more complicated with each new version. Features get added. The UI gets improved. Security gets heightened. The fact the Microsoft managed to include all the new features of the past seven years without significantly increasing power consumption or decreasing performance is indeed an accomplishment.

Also, note the difference between performance and productivity. A GUI is a good example. A command line will always perform better than a GUI. It can run on even the lightest of hardware. But you can (usually) be more productive with a GUI than by typing long, obscure commands into a Bash terminal. Another example is the search indexer: It may be more work for your CPU and hard drive, but it saves you lots of time hunting for files or emails.

wtf

[JackSpratts]

jesus christ, it isn't any better than xp!

Re:Who cares about these tests?

[trum4n]

It's about how well they run on these machines. It's ALL ABOUT the hardware!
Your comment is some retarded shit. RTFA

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GPU rendering and compositing saves CPU power

[benwaggoner]

A Netbook is a system with a very low powered single-core CPU. Everything you can do to move things off the CPU makes everything else faster. Windows 7 can offload GDI, window compositing, and many other effects to the GPU (even one as relatively weak as in Netbooks), saving a ton of CPU performance. And thus making everything else faster, even if it's just looking at a web page that's running some Javascript or Flash.

I just upgraded my kids' Dell Mini 9 (1 GB RAM) to Win 7 RTM from its OEM XP config, and it's remarkably snappier even just doing web browsing, even with a GMA 945.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_7#Desktop_Window_Manager

Re:GPU rendering and compositing saves CPU power

[Spliffster]

So, if I understand this right: 7 is faster than XP because it offloads things to the GPU XP doesn't do (window compositing)? -S

Re:GPU rendering and compositing saves CPU power

[benwaggoner]

Yes, that's correct, if you're running Aero Glass. That was true for Vista as well, to a lesser degree, but Win 7 expands GPU support to GDI+ compositing, improves memory management, adds concurrency for multiple applications, etcetera.

An easy test is to open Task Manager and watch the CPU meters as you shake a decent sized window around the screen quickly. WIthout Aero Glass on you can get near to saturating one core, while with Aero Glass on it won't have much CPU impact at all.

Here's some other detailed information:
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/04/25/engineering-windows-7-for-graphics-performance.aspx

Re:GPU rendering and compositing saves CPU power

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the fact that every netbook I've ever seen ran on an Intel Atom chip (which happens to be DUAL core)

If your buying single-core netbooks, your getting hosed on.

WFP, NDIS6, & HOSTS are troubled in Win7

[Anonymous Coward]

"Security for starters. Vista changed a lot under the hood to improve security" - by wjousts (1529427) on Wednesday July 29, @03:02PM (#28871253)

Well... they did, AND THEY DIDN'T: Like what, you might ask?

1.) HOSTS files not being able to use 0 as a blocking IP address in a CUSTOM HOSTS FILE (for both added speed & security), vs. 0.0.0.0 or 127.0.0.1 (the "loopback adapter" being the WORST of the lot, in terms of efficiency & internal file read speed in loops to 'suck it in' to either the local DNS cache client OR the diskcache (which again, MS has a problem in the DNS Client of it 'breaking down' on LARGER hosts files (purely relative, iirc, when they go over the 4mb mark in size) & it should not be - it's like it is a static sized array/buffer, vs. a dynamic one, like the local diskcache uses, which "takes over" when you turn off the faulty DNS client).

AND

2.) WFP & NDIS6 (which I get into the former & why I think it's not as solid as the 3 part "zone defense"/"greek phalanx" of the older models of Windows for IPSEC.SYS, IPNAT.SYS, TCPIP.SYS, IPFLTDRV.SYS, & AFD.SYS, which acted like a zone defense/greek phalanx via 3 separate drivers, operating @ 3 DIFFERENT LEVELS of the IP stack (whereas it appears WFP only uses a single point layer defense, & when it's down? It's done for, which is NOT the case with the older model))...

3.) NDIS6 based firewalls... see my p.s. below, for that from ROOTKIT.COM

Lots more, & here are the details:

Windows 7, VISTA, & Server 2008 have a couple of "issues" I don't like in them, & you may not either, depending on your point of view (mine's based solely on efficiency & security), & if my take on these issues aren't "good enough"? I suggest reading what ROOTKIT.COM says, link URL is in my "p.s." @ the bottom of this post:

1.) HOSTS files being unable to use "0" for a blocking IP address - this started in 12/09/2008 after an "MS Patch Tuesday" in fact for VISTA (when it had NO problem using it before that, as Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003 still can)... & yes, this continues in its descendants, Windows Server 2008 &/or Windows 7 as well.

So, why is this a "problem" you might ask?

Ok - since you can technically use either:

a.) 127.0.0.1 (the "loopback adapter address")
b.) 0.0.0.0 (next smallest & next most efficient)
c.) The smallest & fastest plain-jane 0

PER EACH HOSTS FILE ENTRY/RECORD...

You can use ANY of those, in order to block out known bad sites &/or adbanners in a HOSTS file this way??

Microsoft has "promoted bloat" in doing so... no questions asked.

Simply because

1.) 127.0.0.1 = 9 bytes in size on disk & is the largest/slowest
2.) 0.0.0.0 = 7 bytes & is the next largest/slowest in size on disk
3.) 0 = 1 byte

Using a 0 also eliminates the need to perform the "decimal-to-hexadecimal" conversion process that 127.0.0.1, or even 0.0.0.0 go thru, since 0 decimal = 0 hex... plus, since the filesystem, memory mgt, & caching kernel mode subsystems of the OS itself use 4 kb sweeps/reads/passes to load up, using a SMALLER string via 0 usage (vs. 0.0.0.0 or 127.0.0.1) will tend to "pack" more records into each pass of the read being done, on disk & in memory, per pass/sweep/read as well.

Even "security guru" Oliver Day @ SecurityFocus.com sees using HOSTS as a good thing for added layered security AND MORE SPEED ONLINE -> http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/491

AND?? So do folks like "SpyBot Search & Destroy" also (since their app populates not only the HOSTS file, but, also files like Opera's Filter.ini, FireFox's block lists, & IE Restricted Zones also, for LAYERED SECURITY (this is the trend & recommended practice by security folks by the by, myself included))

Hey - Even this slashdotter, sootman, uses one & ma

Whistling past the graveyard

[jmorris42]

All this astroturfed media about how great Win7 is and how it is going to kick butt on netbooks. Funny.

They always forget the one critical problem. Price. The only way XP clawed market share away from the penguin was by Microsoft basically giving it away. They aren't planning on giving 7 away so there is going to be a five tiered price structure on netbooks and that is about three too many.

1. ARM Netbooks/smartbooks will be the hot new low cost item this Xmas. They will be at or below where ASUS introduced the EEE PC 700. And just maybe they hit the $200 price point ASUS originally aimed for and missed. Does anyone think WinCE will be the big winner in this market? Ok, maybe they can horn their way in by Xmas '11 but the rumormill hasn't been talking WinCE it has been Android and a little Ubuntu with most trying to roll their own.

2. x86 based machines running Linux. Go look at the HP Mini Mi 110 if you want to see how low x86 hardware can get without the Microsoft tax. I have seen em as low as $249 but they have crept up a bit lately.

3. x86 hardware with an XP preload. Seem to run at least $30 more than a penguin and usually $40-50 more.

4. x86 hardware with Windows 7 starter edition. Hasn't shipped yet but we can assume it will cost at least as much as XP. Odds are it will be mostly useful as a platform to harvest the customer's credit card to upgrade to a more complete edition.

5. x86 hardware preloaded with Windows 7 Home. Either Microsoft gives up on the idea of profits or this puppy boosts the sticker a full $100 over a penguin preload. x86 netbooks have already crept up a hundred or so in average selling price and now Microsoft expects customers to pony up another portrait of Franklin? In this economy? Hello? Anyone remember why the netbook revolution got started in the first place? Wasn't price as big a factor as the form factor?

Ok, so how will the marketplace solve the 'too many SKU problem'? Starter will probably get ditched as a customer relations nightmare. Linux on x86 will probably finish its vanishing act from retail although a few online sellers might continue if the sales are there. That gets from five to three. So it will depend on how many customers think Win7 is worth a premium likely to exceed $50 over XP. If most pay XP dies, if not....

Re:Whistling past the graveyard

[recoiledsnake]

All this astroturfed media about how great Win7 is and how it is going to kick butt on netbooks. Funny.

That maybe funny to you but not to me.
There seems to be some slashdotters too who report Win7 RC working as well or better than Linux on their netbooks. Maybe you think all of them are astroturfers too. I do not have a netbook to test, and I guess you don't too. But, can you point me to what you think is a objective comparison by someone(not a M$ hater in his basement railing against MS) who has actually used Windows 7 and a version of Linux on their netbook? Or do you think MS and media has buried all mentions of how bad Windowss 7 is on netbooks all over the internet?

Re:Whistling past the graveyard

[Vexorian]

Price is no problem if you can subsidize windows 7's price until are the users are hooked. If there's no money for subventions just force OEMs and retailers not to sell netbooks with other OSes if they don't want to lose their access to MS products. It is rather easy.

Re:Whistling past the graveyard

[jmorris42]

> Price is no problem if you can subsidize windows 7's price until are the users are hooked.

Oh yes there is a problem. Microsoft is already hurting because of the hit their current giveaway of XP is causing to their bottom line. The only reason they got away with it was by being able to shine the analysts on with lots of sunshine and bunnies and dreams of the the bazillions Windows 7 was going to rake in come the fall. If they end up giving THAT away to hold market share investors are going to start asking questions. Remember that Windows and Office are the only major sources of revenue for Microsoft. If future Windows revenue is placed in doubt there will likely be a revolt from the shareholders. Remember when Red Hat said their mission wasn't to become as large as Microsoft, but rather to make Microsoft as large as Red Hat? It just might be coming to pass soon, and they will meet somewhat closer to where RH is now I suspect in a couple more years.

> just force OEMs and retailers not to sell netbooks with other OSes

Well two problems with that. One is OEMs can insist on continuing to sell XP. Microsoft may find that giving XP away at firesale pricing has created a dependency they may find it hard to wean OEMs off of. Especially with the ARM bogeyman coming. If ARM chops a hundred off and Linux vs. Win 7 does another, who wants to fight a $200 price gap? And anyway, the 'force em all to sell 100% Windows' line has already proven impossible to maintain. When Dell and HP are pushing penguins (and making money) it is probably too late for that tactic.

Then there is the bigger problem. As netbooks get cheaper they are bringing in consumer electronics outfits who aren't otherwise "PC makers" beholden to Microsoft's goodwill. And it is only a matter of time before retailers who don't care what Microsoft thinks about them will be selling lots of them. Just how much can Microsoft threaten Target? Computers in general are on the verge of becoming consumer electronics with all that implies, netbooks are probably making that transition right now.

Re:Whistling past the graveyard

[Shados]

The lower end editions of Windows have pretty always been "given away" (or close) to OEMs. The rest of the price gets cancelled out by the crapware sellers paying to have their stuff on the machines (which doesn't happen with Linux).

Get a quote for a massive amount of Windows licenses to bundle for kicks (try and pass for an ISV). And when I mean massive, I mean a few hundred thousands licenses. You'll be surprised how low it ends up. And keep in mind if your name was "Dell" or "HP", you'd probably get it for even lower.

Windows XP on netbooks is probably not being priced (much) lower than on normal desktops, when it comes to OEMs. As long as there's some crapware on the machine, the OEM breaks even or close with the free offering.

Re:Whistling past the graveyard

[xtracto]

There seems to be some slashdotters too who report Win7 RC working as well or better than Linux on their netbooks.

Even Windows XP works better than Linux on Netbooks. You cannot make a decent OS from all the "flavors" of Netbook Linux distros. Being it battery life, wireless networking, screen, lack of multitouch support, sound problems or whatnot.

I really would like to put some Linux distro in my 1000HE, but so far I haven't found any distro that works out of the ISO.

Re:Whistling past the graveyard

[Anonymous Coward]

If netbook prices get so low as $250 it will affect the pricing on several other categories of gadgets that are now close to that pricing. For example, I won't fucking pay $250 for an ebook reader (specialized ie. feature-crippled device) if a netbook (all purpose device ie. feature-full) costs the same. But let's not get into the whole ebook reader pricing dementia, 'cause that's a different can of worms.

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It doesn't matter what you think

[westlake]

I thought the point of netbooks was to have a computer for accessing the internet and that's about it.

That is the network appliance.

The geek's all-time-favorite pipe dream.

The rock bottom price and specs for the XP Atom Netbook at Walmart.com is $238 with 512 MB RAM and your choice of an 8 GB SSD or a 160 GB HDD.

$348 buys an 11" screen, 2 GB RAM and a 250 GB HDD.

That makes the netbook a viable budget platform for mobile media and games and pretty much everything else as well, of course - and the dual-core ATOM netbook with NVIDIA graphics is just around the corner.

       

RTFA!

[Ractive]

In almost every benchmark shown in the article XP performs Better than 7, How is this an upgrade?

Re:RTFA!

[recoiledsnake]

Because performance is not the only thing that defines a new OS. If that were so, we would all be running DOS or Minix. The latest Ubuntu is slower than the oldest Ubuntu(on the same hardware) but is still an upgrade. Same with OS X vs. OS 9. People don't notice it because usually they're using faster hardware with the latest version. But Windows 7 adds a lot of security, reliability and UI features while almost remaining at par with a 7 year old OS on the same hardware. That is the real news here.

Re:Big achievement??

[Anonymous Coward]

But you can (usually) be more productive with a GUI than by typing long, obscure commands into a Bash terminal.

If you had tried to make the claim that a GUI was easier to initially learn then a CLI, I'd have agreed. As it stands, I believe you're mistaken. For many applications, a good CLI can be much more productive once the user has taken the time to properly learn it. No, not everything (good luck being productive while editing images on a CLI), but quite a few - most, if you use computers as I do.

No, this being posted on Lynx ):

Seven Years and Billions Later...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seven Years and Billions Later Microsoft has created.... Windows XP!

Seriously, what advantages are there in Win 7?

What is the killer application that makes a switch necessary?
Name one compelling reason to change from XP to W7 (besides XP being killed off).

Wouldn't all that time and money have been better spent fixing all the known bugs in XP to make it faster and leaner, rather than slower and bloated with each service pack?

Seriously Microsoft, not impressive at all.

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On a different note...

[cayenne8]

Can someone tell which is the best netbook for installing Backtrack (3 or 4)?

It appears they're moving the remote-exploit forums over, and hard to get a good read on what works the best out of the box (both for OS install, as well as which has the best (Atheros?) built in wi-fi.

The older wiki I found seems pretty outdated, etc.

Can someone give some good examples of what they think is the best, cheap netbook/laptop to install Backtrack onto, to learn pen testing?

I had an old Toshiba that I got working with a linksys usb wireless, but, it went tits up the other day, so looking for a replacement.

Personal Experience..

[markass530]

When my friend told me he had Windows 7 on his Netbook i was suprised, I was even more suprised upon using it though.. snappy, responsive, I was impressed (full disclosure, don't remember all the details but it had 2 gigs of ram, single core 1.6 ghz atom)

Audio too

[recoiledsnake]

See http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2007/05/welcome_to_the_jungle.html
It's fun to bash Adobe, but they have real problems on their hand. Even Google had trouble picking/developing a graphic toolkit for the Linux version of Chrome.

Re:Big achievement??

[Anonymous Coward]

A GUI is a good example. A command line will always perform better than a GUI. It can run on even the lightest of hardware. But you can (usually) be more productive with a GUI than by typing long, obscure commands into a Bash terminal.

True. But I can beat either of them tab-completing my commonly-used aliases with tcsh in an rxvt. (WTH is "Bash terminal" supposed to mean, anyway?)

Fortunately, most productive work is rather repetitive, which means only a moron would type "long, obscure commands" to do it. If doing obscure tasks occupies most of your productive time, I envy your job -- it's much less boring than practically every other job in the world.

Re:Who cares about these tests?

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the fucking article. They're doing hardware tests on the same hardware. The operating system makes almost no difference, which is exactly what the tests showed. Oooh its a few milliseconds of difference here or there, which is standard deviation for a hardware test on the same hardware.

It's almost as retarded as your response.

Re:Big achievement??

[Anonymous Coward]

A command line will always perform better than a GUI.

Unless that command line is the Exchange 2007 shell

the disk is alot of the battery life issue

[Locutus]

in a netbook, it comes down to the CPU, the display(LCD and GPU), and the disk system. So what exactly do they expect to see comparing Windows with Windows on a system with probably over 30% of the power sucked up by a spinning disk? They should have tested with an SSD for the HD and then you're really just talking the CPU and display sucking up most of the power. Still, it's Windows vs Windows so I would not expect too much of a difference if you throw enough RAM so neither version of Windows feels constrained.

And do they even mention the amount of RAM in that? It comes stock with 1GB but 2GB is possible, maybe more. Too bad they didn't compare with what a Linux distro could do on some of those tests and with an SSD.

LoB

Ubuntu Remix

[BlackSnake112]

Has anyone tried Ubuntu remix on a touch screen netbook (or tablet)? That interface looks like it was designed for a touch screen.

Errata

[recoiledsnake]

This was supposed to be in quotes in the bottom half of my comment. Need more coffee.

This is what happens when you don't have any competition. Its not an operating system, its a bloated behemoth born of a monopoly that wants to kill competition in every software market it can.

Microsoft should have been split up in 2000.
You can't create competition through regulation

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I kmnow this is off-topic but...

[JustNiz]

I kmnow this is off-topic but...can anyone confirm if the following has been fixed in Windows 7?

Vista's copy progress dialog doesn't even tell you the name of the file you're copying any more. It only tells you part of the path it comes from. XP gives you the filename and full path.

If you move a folder containing files to a different place that already has a folder with the same name, XP merges them properly. Even with UAC turned off, Vista comes up with a supremely annoying dialog to confirm each file in turn, and even after a succesful move, the source folder is left behind.

If there's even one file in a folder that Vista thinks might be a media file, it presents the file list of the whole folder with media attributes instead of 'all files' attributes by default. It does this every time you create a new foler and you can't turn off or even force it to use a particular profile.

Vista's DRM means it can't play some of my media that XP can play without problem.

Vista still forgets window settings even if you set "remember each windows settings". This is a problem way back to Windows95 I think.

Re:I kmnow this is off-topic but...

[Shados]

I just tried for kicks... if I move a folder to another that contains a folder with the same name, it pops the message asking me what I want to do, and then at the bottom there's a tick box "Do this for the following X conflicts". Click that, popup doesnt happen again.

Thats with a folder with a very complex directory tree and thousands of files (I tried with a backup, basically)

The source folder does stay behind (though empty), however.

You're right about the file copy progress though. It gives you the entire path up to the containing folder, but not the file itself. On the upside, the progress dialog is a lot more precise.

Re:I kmnow this is off-topic but...

[Shados]

(Note that this was on Vista, not Win7...my Win7 box doesnt have a good set of data to make some meaningful test and im too lazy to make one =P)

Re:I kmnow this is off-topic but...

[jean-guy69]

You may want to try teracopy

*sigh*

[Runaway1956]

Those damned slashtotters!! They've taken the frigging site down!! Oh - wait. . . .

Re:Who cares about these tests?

[Runaway1956]

The tests confirm what many of us have been saying all along. Using XP as a baseline, Vista sucks gangrenous donkey balls through a garden hose. Win7, on the other hand, runs about as well as XP. Depending on configuration, of course. It wouldn't be terribly inaccurate to say that Win7 is XP with a better security model, and missing some of the bogus legacy shit that should have been dropped almost a decade ago.

Re:Who cares about these tests?

[evanspw]

To be fair, it's easy to configure Vista to run about as well as XP too. It's just that journalists are too thick (and don't get me started on why microsoft released vista with the default config they chose).

Re:Who cares about these tests?

[LilGuy]

My uncle did his masters thesis on the difference an operating system makes in doing calculations and how long batteries last on the same hardware (power consumption).

It does make a difference -- one larger than he had anticipated.

I like windows7

[khufure]

I quite like windows 7. If you have solid state disks they will run MUCH better. I've found Windows7 scales significantly better with more resources, such as an i7 cpu, than XP does.. XP barely used your 3rd & 4th core, for instance.

Seems pretty unremarkable

[hey!]

Why would we *expect* the benchmarks for *the same hardware* to be very different under *controlled* conditions? You're just aggregating small differences in things like system call overhead over a long, long time. Why *should* the battery life playing a movie be any different, unless one or the other OSs had horribly broken power management?

The place where things get gnarly is on the edge; when you have *just* enough resources to run the current set of tasks; when you're just about to run out of memory, or the hard disk heads are skipping all over the place and disk I/O requests are piling up. These devices aren't intended for severe work loads, so the relevant questions are how many resources do these operating systems consume and does it leave enough headroom for what you have in mind?

A third question I learned to ask from using Vista is how much statistical spread is there in the average performance. Mildly poky performance is something you can live with. Great performance 99% of the time and 1% of time encountering painful slowness is much worse. Find a benchmark that measures that under a wide variety of realistic circumstances and you have a winner.

Re:Who cares about these tests?

[Joce640k]

It could have made sense - if they'd showed us what the dreaded Vista did on that machine, but nooooo...

It would have been more useful to see boot times instead of 3DMark scores, but noooo...

Available free RAM right after bootup? Noooo...

What we are told, however, is that an OS can change the memory bandwidth. Who would have thought...? Microsoft's R&D division have really surpassed themselves this time!

In short, a pretty retarded test.

I got mine...

[Anonymous Coward]

I got an eeepc 900 HA before they killed off the 9 inch netbooks.It has XP and I installed Ubuntu on it. I don't want a netbook over 10 inches. I might as well just use a laptop at that point.

8 year old OS doesn't beat a release canidate?

[w0mprat]

*facepalm*

An 8 year old production operating system with three service packs and too many patches to count.

*versus*

A pre-production release canidate that has alot of patches and service packs ahead of it in it's lifecycle.

The fact that XP can barely scrape a lead of 1-2% doesn't seem like any kind of victory. If anything, it's a fail. I can't believe the article didn't make this observation. In this case, Windows 7 is looking like a better choice than XP for netbooks.

Re:8 year old OS doesn't beat a release canidate?

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't read the part where 7 is *both* faster, and more feature packed.

Re:Who cares about these tests?

[bluemonq]

Whether or not you or I can vLite a copy of Vista or grab an optimized image off of bittorrent isn't the point of this. It's an out-of-the-box test of the computing experience that your typical I-don't-give-a-shit-about-how-this-thing-works-just-let-me-watch-YouTube user will get.

Re:Who cares about these tests?

[DJRumpy]

Considering the variation seen in Vista/XP benchmarks, it's a valid concern and of interest to both home users and corporate shops.

Re:Who cares about these tests?

[evanspw]

Sure, that's what I was alluding to about msft's default config of vista. It's retarded, and has done immense reputational and financial damage to them (boo hoo). But it's hard to fix. About five minutes on google will do 95%.

Re:Who cares about these tests?

[evanspw]

erm, that should be "not hard to fix".

That's not true

[Anonymous Coward]

>It is *terrible* at managing multiple network cards (if you have a WiFI Internet connection and a local-only wired connection, you can't access the Internet. It'll route through the ethernet cord only).

That's not true. You can set the metric either using the control panel, or by route command in the console.
Also, applications could choose the ip they wanted to use. You could surf on wifi while downloading things on torrent using ethernet etc.

>Similar to the above, it fails at sharing a wireless connection over a wired network (handy for places with restrictive or expensive wireless access).

I didn't had any problems with it.

Fewer reboots ???

[UBfusion]

"a lot less reboots when installing software/drivers/updates" is the first and best argument that might persuade me to migrate - do you have any references this is the case with Win7 ?

Re:Fewer reboots ???

[gparent]

No, the only reference I got is "trust me". I was surprised when I didn't have to reboot after installing network drivers, NVidia drivers, chipset drivers, sound drivers and a few security patches. It feels really weird.

Lenovo IdeaPad S12

[UBfusion]

Lenovo IdeaPad S12 - 295956U - Black is $429 on shop.lenovo.com

(while the 295955U and 295954U are Atom-based and +$70).

You little bitch

[Anonymous Coward]

on your knees and suck my cock anonymous cowardon

You've posted this tripe before, cocksucker.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop with the fucking retarded blogspam, dipshit.

Win7 on HP Mini1000-TU

[Anonymous Coward]

i swapped out XP on my HP Mini1000-TU for Win 7 RC and it's been working sweet

Redhoodie

Next level netbooks

[crimperman]

What would that be then: a 250GB HDD and a 17" screen? MS already managed to coerce the netbook market into turning netbooks from niche web-based appliances into mini-laptops which more closely resemble the power laptops of five years ago. Enough!

IYAM a netbook should:

- have solid state storage
- have a small footprint (no more 12" screens)
- be largely a web-based client: minimal local apps.

You want anything else: go buy a laptop!

Thanks for the mod up "INSIGHTFUL"

[Anonymous Coward]

See my subject-line above, & again, thank you for the upward moderation of my post (after it was modded down rather unjustly w/ no reasons given):

See, I have an AC that's been "trolling me" for around a month or so now here.

(I.E.-> He's obviously also using a registered 'sock puppet' account to mod me down with before he replies as AC with which he usually replies with some wiseguy remarks as AC after modding me down - strangely, this time, he did not respond w/ his usual b.s. though...)

All in all? I hope you enjoyed the read, & found it informative.

APK

P.S.=> I also hope that Microsoft can either PROVE ME WRONG on all accounts noted (I do not think this will happen) or, that MS makes some corrections after looking into the issues on:

1.) NDIS6 (rootkit.com finding it easier to unhook than older Windows' models' firewall)

2.) HOSTS files (no longer being able to use the faster + more efficient 0 blocking IP address vs. the larger & slower 0.0.0.0 or 127.0.0.1 (worst one))

3.) WFP single layer defense (VISTA onwards) vs. the older 3 layer/3 driver "Zone Defense"/"Greek Phalanx" style of IP stack defense that Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003 utilized ... apk

Windows7 ServicePack Zero

[u64]

Win7sp0

Wait a few years until Win7sp2 or Win7sp3.

XP is more mature. Linux is even more mature.

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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Still don't know why.

[jridley]

I still haven't seen a single reason why I need Vista or 7. Heck, Windows 2000 is still fine; I run it on one of my machines. I'm only running XP because that's what came on the machines. I could replace it with W2K and hardly notice the difference.

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[account_deleted]

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Really?

[mpath]

From the review:

Many PC manufacturers, including netbook makers, are offering a free upgrade voucher for Microsoft's Windows 7 and ...

But from what I can tell, Asus & Dell do not.

I think netbook customers will have to wait until 10/22 since the valid upgrade path is for Vista OEM'd products.

Makes no sense

[Jordan711]

Netbooks don't have much memory, and fancy operating systems such as Windows Vista or Windows 7 use up a lot of system resources.Why use such a fancy OS for a computer meant for reading email and accessing the Internet.